By Walter Brasch
Shortly after the mass murders at Umpqua Community College near Roseburg, Ore., President Obama predicted
the extreme right wing would crank out press releases declaring the nation
needs fewer gun control laws and more guns.
The pro-gun lobby didn’t disappoint him.
Shortly after the mass murders in a Charleston, S.C., church in
June, NRA board member Charles Cotton, an attorney who fired his first shot
when he was four years old, had claimed if
the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, a state senator “had voted to allow gun owners to carry
their own weapons [into churches], eight of his church members . . . might be alive.”
After the shootings in Oregon, Cotton said had the
students been carrying guns, there would have been no mass murder. “How carefree do you have to be with all of the mass shootings that are
going on throughout America to not have something as simple and convenient as a
small knife when you go to class, let alone a gun with which to protect
yourself?” Cotton asked.
The
Republican presidential herd called for even more guns in a culture that has
made Americans inured to violence. Presidential candidate Jeb Bush said, “Stuff
happens.”
The
absurdity of arming all of America is that there are no requirements that
anyone with a gun needs to know how to use that gun. The possibility of any one
person with a hand gun being able to react faster than the shooter, be more
accurate than the shooter, or not accidentally wounding or killing others is
high. Heavily armed police, better trained in weapons than most Americans, did
not kill the shooter, who wore body armor; the shooter killed himself.
The shooter’s mother, who said she got all her knowledge about
guns from her son, acknowledged
he was autistic and a head-banger. In their house were 20 guns, including
semi-automatic assault rifles; the killer used six of those guns at the college.
Those who believe in no gun regulation say the solution is
better mental health counseling. That may be a small part of the solution, but
there are numerous questions. If a mother recognizes there may be a problem
with her son but does nothing, who is responsible for compelling someone to see
a counselor? Should the government step in to order counseling? Could this
violate certain Constitutional rights? If the gun-proponents want the
government to intercede, how do they reconcile their conflicting belief of
limited government intervention in all matters against mandatory mental health
counseling? Equally important, if they believe in more mental health
counseling, why have they refused to vote for or approve funds for more mental
health clinics? One fact is not accepted by the gun-rights absolutists. “Only 3%-5% of violent acts can be attributed to individuals living with
a serious mental illness,” according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and those with mental
illnesses “are over 10 times more likely to be victims of violent crime than
the general population.”
There are more than 310 million guns in civilians’ possession in the United States. That’s one for every
person from birth to death, and the highest per
capita gun ownership rate in the world. During the past decade, there have
been about 301,000 Americans killed by guns; that is about 4,250 times greater than all deaths
from terrorists in the United States.
In 1996, Congress blocked funding for the Centers for Disease
Control to collect and analyze data about gun violence; it extended that ban this past July. In 2013, Congress had refused to pass common sense
proposals to reduce gun violence. About 85 percent of all Americans want
universal background checks, according to a non-partisan Pew Research poll in
July. A majority of Americans want a limit on the size of ammunition magazines,
and bans on assault weapons and civilians owning armor-piercing bullets. The
politicians’ greed and loyalty to gun manufacturers is greater than their responsibility
to their constituents and, more important, to discovering the truth
The gun manufacturers, which receive about $6 billion in income each year, help fund the NRA and other pro-gun organizations. It’s
simply a business decision. Nothing more.
Last year, the NRA spent $37 million on campaign donations and lobbying. In 2012, the NRA spent about $14
million trying to defeat President Obama in his successful run for a second
term, according to
The New York Times. Failing to stop
the President from a second term led to even more gun sales. “It’s been off the chart, Gary
Jessup of UT Arms in Kansas, told the Kansas
City Star. About 4.7 million background checks were recorded in November
and December 2012, according to the FBI, as the extreme
right-wing descended into a cavern of fear, swathed by delusional paranoia.
The NRA isn’t protecting the legitimate hunters and
target shooters. Several former NRA presidents and board members in a delusional
descent into paranoia, have said the NRA and gun-toting Americans are what keep
the federal government from invading the states and seizing authority. Former
NRA president David Keene told the Daily Caller that the Second Amendment
“was not written to protect squirrel hunters.” Fred Romero, an NRA field
representative, said the
Second Amendment, which NRA and gun-rights organizations cling to as if it was
Linus’s baby blanket, “is not there to protect the interests of hunters, sports
shooters and casual plinkers [but] as a balance of power. [It is] a loaded gun
in the hands of the people held to the heads of government.” Former NRA
president Sandy Froman believes,
“We are at war” within America and “my fellow NRA members are at the heart of
national defense.” Most of the NRA staff and members of the board believe the
president of the United States is a tyrant—some compare him to Hitler—who wants
to disarm all Americans. It is this kind of thinking that forced former
president George H.W. Bush to renounce his life membership
in the NRA when the leadership declared federal agents to be “jack-booted
thugs.” It is this paranoid fear that
allows gun manufacturers to create more guns, where every shooting spurs
profits at local gun stores, and which helps the NRA and similar organizations
to throw money at politicians to assure that fear, re-elections, and profits
are what matter, not lives.
Instilling fear into the people is what sells guns and buys
politicians. Candi Kinney, owner of a gun store near Umpqua Community College, said the murders helped spur sales of
guns, and ordered even more AR-15 semi-automatic assault rifles. “There’s
always a rush on them after a big shooting,” she told the Guardian.
As World War II was coming to an end, and as the Allies began
liberating the concentration camps where the Nazis murdered and tortured more
than six million Jews, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered his troops to bring
the civilians from nearby villages to the camps. He wanted the villagers to see
those who lived, whose possessions and gold teeth were torn from them, and whose
flesh now barely hung on their bones. He wanted the civilians—most who falsely
claimed they didn’t know about the genocide—to see the crematoriums, whose
smoke they had to have seen, whose odors they had to have smelled. He wanted the civilians to go to the edge of
forests, where Nazis murdered hundreds of thousands of Jews, and where the
nearby villagers gleefully watched their soldiers and collaborators shoot
pistols and automatic weapons that would end the lives of infants and
grandparents, shopkeepers and mill workers, and some of the world’s most
brilliant artists, writers, musicians, and scientists. Decades later, extreme
right-wing militant Americans foolishly claim if the Jews had guns, the
holocaust would never have occurred.
Let’s now require all politicians, and all those who believe
fewer gun laws and more guns will solve the murder problem, to go to the crime
scene. Let every politician and gun-rights advocate within 25 miles of a mass
murder walk where the victims once walked. Let them see the blood and bodies
shredded by copper, steel, and lead. Let them witness the police and medical
personnel trying to do their jobs, while doing their best to hide their own
tears and rage. Let them hear the cries of the families and friends. Make them
go to the morgue and watch autopsies on bodies that can talk only to medical
examiners. Make them go to the funerals, to again hear the crying of the
families and friends, who talk about lives lost decades too early.
The only thing most politicians want to do after every mass
shooting is to say their thoughts and prayers are with the families of those
killed and wounded. But, their words are as hollow as their logic. Let the
truth ring true, that the politicians were bought and paid for by the gun industry,
and that is why common-sense gun
reform was voted down, and the violence continues.
[Assisting
on this column was Rosemary R. Brasch. Walter Brasch is an award-winning
author/journalist, whose latest book is Fracking Pennsylvania, a look at
the health, environmental, political, and economic issues affecting the
American population.]
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