This past few weeks has brought us gun tragedies beyond what we could have dreamed possible. Gun owners, previously law abiding, killed. The present system is largely at fault.
Unfortunately, we share blame for this.
During the 80s and 90s, gun control was an issue of political combat. The right and left went back and forth. Us arguing that guns only lead to violence, they sticking their fingers in their ears and going LALALALA. We fought for the men and women and children that they and their NRA puppetmasters murdered. They fought for profits and their precious "rights", rights that caused the massacre we had today.
And then the late 90s happened. And a sort of detente settled over the land. We stopped pushing for more restrictions. We didn't even raise a fuss when in 2003 the assault weapons ban expired. We had "bigger things to worry about". Now we see the foolishness of our ways. We chose the easy road, one of not bringing up the elephant in the room, rather than confronting it for the good of our children and our grandchildren. We were weak. I don't like to admit I was wrong, but exchanging the lives of our countrymen and women for political expediency was one of the worst compromises we could have made.
We didn't push for anything when we had congress. It would have been a battle, but a battle we could have won. We could have banned assault weapons. We could have launched a national registry. We could have made the costs of owning a gun so onerous that the gunnies would have thrown their hands up and said "screw it". We could have banned gun shows and pulled the licenses of every gun dealer in America. We could have ended gun ownership in a generation.
We didn't. We were too busy to think of the men and women and children we helped kill. We let the NRA cabal dictate the terms of our engagement on the issue. Our cowardice, our inability to put the lives of our children ahead of our own petty convenience, helped the NRA murder those children today.
I blame President Clinton and Obama. I blame Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. But more than that, I blame myself. I never pushed it as an issue. I never demanded accountability for NRA murders when I spoke and wrote to my representatives. I never started a petition to drive the NRA manmen from the capital. I never spoke with my money. I am most at fault for this.
We must rectify this. President Obama must do whatever is in his (substantial) power to destroy the NRA and guns in America. He must do whatever it takes to get guns out of the hands of those who use them. He must toss aside political expediency and take on the most powerful criminal cartel in human history head on.
We have to back him up. We must make up for our past mistakes. We must look at those murdered children every day, and ask ourselves what we can do, today, to prevent that. That means writing, that means calling. That means talking to our friends. That means publicly shaming gun owners and gun stores. We must be on the front lines, so the president knows we have his back. So he knows that we are in this for the long haul. So he knows that we will fight with him, every day, to destroy gun ownership in America.
Will you step up with me and the President?