After the horrific shooting in Orlando, there are some facts we might want to consider:
• A homegrown (U.S.-born, U.S. citizen) Islamist terrorist committed the worst mass shooting in U.S. history.
• The National Rifle Association (NRA) defends the right of everyone — including terrorists — to obtain, possess, load and carry assault weapons.
• Many members of Congress take contributions from the NRA — 261 in the 2012 cycle, for example (nearly all Republicans).
• Assault weapons are one of the most common denominators in mass shootings.
• Congress refuses to ban assault weapons or even pass seriously restrictive laws on their possession.
• President Obama has now delivered 15 post-mass shooting addresses to the nation. Almost every time he asks us to make gun control an election issue.
• We don’t.
While almost nothing qualifies as the single issue determining how the wise voter chooses, the priorities of our opinions are critical. If we cannot make the assault weapon ban — the single most commonsense step with which we can begin — a top or near-top priority as we question our candidates, then we are simply derelict. Automatic handguns, assault rifles -— these are used to commit evil acts from coast to coast, from north to south, in our besieged nation. We let them die in Columbine high school. In Springfield, Oregon. At Virginia Tech. Sandy Hook. San Bernadino. Umqua Community College in Oregon. In the AME Church in South Carolina and in many more places — 175 such mass shootings just in this year so far.
We seem to be a nation quivering in fear and hoping to placate our fear by being prepared to annihilate all comers, but this means instead that we enable more attackers rather than being prepared to handle them. The Orlando shooter killed 50 outright with more in the hospital fighting for their lives. He wasn’t stopped for more than three hours, despite a highly militarized SWAT team, and despite a highly permissive Second Amendment and a heavily armed populace.
It is time to end this experiment with transmogrifying the entire U.S. into Tombstone Territory with everyone armed to the teeth, prepared to either be a bad guy or take out a bad guy. It is not working. It is time to try learning new relational skills, new competencies that can de-escalate conflict, that can help those who are mentally ill, that can disarm those who might come in proximity to our children, to our friends, to our family members. These skills are not rocket science and are studied to make emergency room personnel more effective, to enable mental health workers to be safer without weapons. This is available and is so much more adaptive than our hyperarmed, aggressive culture that breeds more and more of these utterly avoidable tragedies.
There used to be a frequent commenter on theBDC who went by `buffy’. Later, she reappeared as `al-Beekwell’. She was a leftwinger dark oracle who specialized in phishing for ways to de-construct theConstitution that will be more politically-advantageous to pigrezzive ideology. The traditional Constitution is too clunky & obstinate, too staid & grave. TheConstitution instead is a tool that stymies the Obama/alinskyites designs. It is too much a wad of paper written by property-obsessed old white-guys, they say. According to pigrezzives, theConstitution desperately ..needs.. to be brought up to date. It needs to be changed from an old dead piece of parchment, into a modern `instrument’ that modern living People today (or their alinskyite-agents) can use to do the leftwinger good that needs to be done, they say. We need a _`Living Constitution’_, so the liberals say.
But the nation would be wise to be very very very wary, of manipulators & wool-pullers like TomGHastings & `al-Beakwell’. `buffy’ was playing a `gotcha-game’. She was phishing for a way to eliminate the electoral-college or to weaken the2ndAmendment. The inevitable result would be an unredressible tyranny of the blue-states & authoritarian-imperative. `buffy’/Hastings would terribly alter this `Living Constitution’ in other ways. The progressives are convinced they are an unmitigateable tide of the future – the Imperial Obama revolutionary purpose of irresistable superiority.
Hastings makes specious un-categorized arguments against a branch of government – & thus against the standing Constitution – essentially wishing for its dissolve. Wash away the judicial. Then after that, wash away the legislative. Ah-h then, the alinskyite/pigrezzivist/marxist ideal is realized. The uncomplicated dictatorship by theElite. The World will again be a simple place!
That’s funny. Obama shows up on TV after an incident like this & pretends to be America’s president.