Not too long ago Americans smoked cigarettes in bars and restaurants and even in elevators and on airplanes, doctors used to tell pregnant women it was okay to smoke. Smoking was socially acceptable. Sometime in the 1990’s awareness came over the social consciousness of our nation.
There was concrete data that proved that cigarette smoke caused cancer; later scientists proved that people who do not smoke can also get cancer from just breathing second hand smoke. So we stopped smoking so much. We passed laws to prevent people from smoking in public facilities, and then in work places. We were protecting the health and safety of the people.
Government does have a responsibility to protect the safety and health of the people. A cowardly government may be brought to account for relinquishing the responsibility of protecting its people. A gun is no different than a cigarette. A gun murders people just like a cigarette murders people.
The mantra that we all hear from the NRA and the gun people is that guns don’t kill people, but that people kill people. That is a lie, guns do kill people, need proof, just ask any mother from the Tucson murders or the Aurora murders or the Sandy Hook murders. I believe they will tell you that guns can and do kill people.
We need to replace that lie with the truth “Only cowards carry guns”. Gun advocates and the NRA are fearful of unseen evils, they are the cowards, and they want everyone to cower with them. They want to sell you your own fear so you think you need a gun, they want you to be a coward. The NRA and the gun advocates have always know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Deranged Nazi Joe Goebbels tagged the first rule of propaganda: Loudly declare that the evil you are doing is “really” being done by your opponent. Psychologists call this projection. The NRA is a psychopath with money and they have become the masters of distractions. Throwing money into media and at politicians they have succeeded in distracting many, many people from the real problem, just like the psychopaths did in 1930’s Germany.
The gun advocates and the NRA’s mantra is that only people kill people, but that propaganda lie says it all. It clearly says that we need to prevent psychotic people from getting guns and ammunition, we need to severely restrict the types of guns sold and we need to severely regulate how guns are sold. We need to put in place a precise and comprehensive investigation of any buyer’s background. Only cowardly people oppose background checks.
Legally and ethically the US Constitution’s Preamble trumps the 2nd amendment. The Preamble states “to insure the domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our prosperity.”
The President if he wanted to could declare the sales of guns and ammunition must be regulated for safety of the people. We could very easily pass laws to protect the health and safety of the people when it comes to guns and ammunition but we are cowards.
We need to codify harsh penalties for the illegal sale of guns. It is a horrible failure of our local and federal governments to not protect the regular people of America. We have a “Do Not Fly” list, but we do not have a “Do Not Buy” list to prevent psychotic criminal people from buying guns.
The human sorrow from gunshot violence cannot be measured, a grandmother who will never see her grandchildren grow-up. A father that is left with only a picture of his smiling son because his son was gunned down in his first grade class, parents left without their daughter, whose last memory of her will be that she was gunned down in the midnight showing of Batman. Parents that are left behind knowing their child was capable of committing a mass shooting.
The cost of gun violence cost us billions of dollars every year, all of these costs are born usually by city and county governments. There is no other way to cover these costs except by taxing the purchase of guns and ammunition, but the federal government’s hands are tied by the deranged and cowardly NRA gun people in Washington.
To not do something about the gun violence epidemic and all these sadistic injuries is cowardly and demented. It is our ethical duty as a society to try and prevent gun violence, to prevent more murders from happening. Only cowards fail to act.
In January 1936 Hitler's Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels declared, "We can do without butter, but despite all our love of peace not without arms. One cannot shoot with butter, but with guns." And for once in his wretched life Goebbels said something truthful. People don’t kill people guns do. Only cowards carry guns.