How many more innocents are going to be gunned down by maniacs and lunatics before the people of this country realize common sense and end their ridiculous obsession with firearms?
The answer to the above question is – probably not in the next hundred years.
It’s a frightening fact that having spent many years in this country it’s become obvious to me that it’s not just the nutters and testosterone-fueled delinquents who consider it their “right” to carry around firearms. No, sadly, the vast majority of Americans I’ve known and been involved with over my thirteen years in this land – otherwise normal, intelligent, often well-educated people – cannot visualize a society without the right to ‘bear arms’.
Even those who find the idea of automatic weapons repugnant still deem it their right to carry a handgun while in a town or city. Only this week one man said to me, “You never know when someone might pull a gun on you. You need to carry a weapon to protect yourself.”
When I pointed out to him that, if no-one had a gun, there’d be no need for him to carry one, his eyes glazed over with that ‘this does not compute’ look, then muttered quietly that, “…it will never happen.”
The Second Amendment of the Constitution has much to answer for – including many wasted lives. This country’s founders no more desired to see their citizens crazily slaughtering each other, than they wished to see their fledgling nation turned into a plutocracy, or theocracy. The document is quite clear in interpretation and cannot sanely be considered at all relevant in today’s modern American society.
Sadly, for Americans and America, senseless slaughter such as occurred on live TV in Virginia this week, is destined to continue indefinitely.
President Obama’s pleas to Congress to enact gun control will, as always, fall on deaf ears.