The Craziness of Doing Nothing

Another day, another death by gun.  This time it was a Mendota Heights police officer who pulled over a vehicle, only to be gunned down with three shots almost instantaneously.  The officer never had a chance to pull his weapon.  It was still in the holster.  Guns are lethal by design, and reaction time is almost nonexistent.  All my prayers and thoughts go the officers family, and please make a donation to help the family out at http://www.gofundme.com/ccqr1s

At this point, it's time for the mouth pieces of the gun industry to rush in and insist we do not talk about guns so soon after the tragedy.  They'll insist we need to concern ourselves with the victims of the violence, people the gun lobby doesn't really care about.  The gun lobby's true motivation is to prevent people from talking about guns when another senseless death is in front of us, as they know it makes people ask the question, "why are guns so prevalent in our culture."  Guns are so prevalent because the gun industry, the bullet industry and their lackeys make so much money off of guns, whilst wrapping their image in the American flag, they have all but drowned out any real counterpoint based in sanity.

The pro-gun forces in the USA have really become obscenely brazen.  After the Newtown, Connecticut massacre, where young children were riddled with bullets, shot from a weapon doing exactly what it was supposed to do, the public outrage was so intense, the gun lobby needed to come up with a new narrative.  They started planting an idea in the fringe far right of the pro-gun groups that these mass shootings were not real, and the federal government was either staging them or making up the whole crisis for nefarious reasons, something slack jawed morons ate up as a 'viable' explanation for what really happened.  They were so good at pushing this conspiracy theory, people even drove to Newtown for the purpose of ripping down memorials for the slain children in the middle of the night, screaming "it's a lie!"  At the same time, the same gun industry put the same gun model used to slaughter young children on special, reminding buyers, "you'd better get yours now before Obama comes and takes them all away."  Sales skyrocketed.

Or how about the new NRA narrative; people should be forced to learn how to shoot a weapon in order to move on in school, the government should subsidize gun sales, and there should be mandatory gun areas in the country.  Of course, these pro-gun initiatives would take the profits of these gun and bullet companies into the stratosphere.  When I first read this, I was shocked at how much it sounded like a dystopian future from an 1980's book.  This backs up my statement, the only gun rights being stomped on in the United States in 2014 is my right to NOT have guns jammed into my families face 24/7, 365.

For God's sake, we regulate cough syrup in this country, a product where the vast majority of purchases are to stop coughing due to illness.  We have tons of regulations on cough syrup because a small portion of the purchases go to drug abuse and for meth making. Meanwhile, most injuries and deaths involving a gun are not some "good guy" with a gun stopping a bad guy with a gun, they are accidental shootings, suicides and homicides.  Salon magazine complied the numbers for one year after Newtown (December 16, 2012 - December 14, 2013):

Estimated number of people killed in the USA that year by guns - 33,173
Number of school shootings that year - 26
Number of children who died that year do to gun violence - nearly 200

(http://www.salon.com/2013/12/14/after_newtown_a_look_at_guns_in_america_partner/)

Do you think there were 33,173 cases of good guys with guns stopping bad guys with guns in that one year?  I would guess there were 100 of fewer cases where non-law enforcement used a gun to stop someone threatening bodily harm, nationwide.  If I'm correct, 33,173 cases, 100 justified.  Heck let's make it a John McClain wet dream and call it 33,173 cases, 5000 justified.  Even under the grossly unbalanced pro-gun stats, bad cases of gun violence are over five times more likely than good cases, and we are not even including the numerous times someone threatened another person with a gun.  And yet the mere suggestion of funding the regulations currently in place (something the gun lobby made sure would be permanently defunded), proposing legislation to stop gun purchases by the mentally ill or a violent offender (a category the shooter in the latest story fell into), or suggesting that gun stores are inspected to make sure their gun inventory is accounted for, will send the gun enthusiasts into a screaming fit, accusing you of being against the founding fathers and everything this country stands for.  By the way, read some history.  The founding fathers would not be for this carnage on our streets, and would keep pointing to the "well regulated militia" part of the 2nd Amendment, something the gun lobby wishes they could erase.

Let's take the current madness from the gun lobby and apply it so something else just as dangerous, drinking and driving.  Imagine the liquor industry, feeling like their sales would skyrocket if drinking and driving were legal, insisted police officers not be allowed to enforce any laws on the books involving alcohol, not fund the enforcement of said laws, make it illegal to question if someone is drunk, insist not serving a drunk another beer would violate the spirit of the country, and insist no government agency or funding be used to investigate the real numbers behind drinking and driving.  They then introduce us to a guy we'll call Bill.  Bill has been a drunk all of his life, has driven drunk all the time and yet has never gotten into an accident.  The hypothetical liquor industry will do what the real gun lobby does, take away all of the parameters used to evaluate a situation that could bring any negative analysis regarding Bill, and then filter the remaining facts through a rose color prism to come up with the conclusion they want everyone to believe; since Bill never got in trouble, and since Bill is a great guy (take our word for it), then no one good has ever been hurt by drinking and driving.

They then start spending money wildly, buying off politicians left and right to make sure no new legislation about drinking and driving ever comes to light, regardless of public demand.  When a drunk drives into a crowd of people, killing twelve, they will insist no one talk about drinking and driving so soon after the accident, biding their time until they can launch a full scale offensive about how the founding fathers wanted people to drink and drive.  Also, are we sure the case with the twelve deaths actually happened?  Maybe it was the government trying to take away your booze and car keys. (To quote the boogie man - boggie, boogie, boogie boogie!)

But that still isn't enough.  To make this comparison really represent where the gun nuts are today, you would have to insist everyone, regardless of age, criminal history and mental stability be allowed to drink and drive.  As a matter of fact, we should have mandatory drinking and driving zones, and drinking and driving classes in schools! "When everyone is drunk and behind the wheel of a car, only then will we be truly safe."

I hope I didn't just give the liquor lobby any ideas.

Nothing will change.  That's the saddest part of all of this.  I am pro hunting guns, and although I would never have one, I'm okay with personal defense handguns.  I will be ridiculed because I just want the unjustifiable body count to stop.  What will it take to get common sense gun laws passed and enforced in this country?  I don't know, a slaughter of 700 or 800 adults and children.  The outcry for change would be deafening, but it all comes down to whether or not our politicians would ever look at the gun lobby and say, "no campaign donation, regardless of size, will prevent me from doing what is right."

I am not holding my breath.