We’ve seen this before, another mass shooting, this time over 50 people killed and a couple of hundred wounded by another unbalanced American male. Shortly, you’ll here what congressmen and senators with a (R) next to their name always say after a mass shooting, ”It’s not the right time to talk about gun control.” And he/she will be right.
The time to talk about gun control was before all those people in Las Vegas were murdered, before the mass shooting in Orlando, before the one in Blacksburg, before Newtown, Killeen,San Ysidro, San Bernardino, Edmond, Fort Hood, Binghamton, Aurora and so many other preventable disasters.
You might be surprised to know that Congress is currently trying to pass new gun control legislation. It’s not legislation to reinstate the assault weapons ban, or close the loopholes in current law that allow any unhinged person to buy guns without background checks on the internet and gun shows. No, It’s legislation that would make it easy for felons and domestic abusers to buy gun silencers without a background check. The NRA somehow got the GOP to slip it into the SHARE Act. Apparently, GOP stands for Guns Over People.
The somehow is quite simple to figure out. The NRA bought the GOP with campaign donations so that they will write only gun control legislation designed to protect gun and ammo manufacturers’ profits, not American lives. Our representatives have written many laws to protect the gun lobby in the past. They’ve written laws to protect gun manufacturers from litigation and to prohibit federal funds to be used to determine the correlation between gun ownership and gun deaths.
The cause of death on the death certificates of the people killed in Las Vegas will be listed as gunshot wounds. But that’s not the real cause. The real cause of death is greed. The greed of the gun and ammo manufacturers, the greed of the NRA, and most of all, the greed of the politicians who take their money. So listen to hear which politicians say one of their time worn phrases such as, “Now is not the time to talk about gun control” or “Let’s not politicize these deaths” or “ It’s mental health issue, not a gun control issue” or “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people” or “If I a good guy had a gun” or “Criminals will still get guns” or “Video games are to blame.” When you hear a politician recite one of those phrases from the NRA script, you know they have been paid off not to protect you and when the time comes, you should vote them out before more people die.
In the meantime, it’s time to start a meaningful conversation about gun control.