Like Our Children, LOVE Our Guns

The senseless shooting and murder of Trayvon Martin has been haunting and troubling me terribly…and this is but a one-off. In the U.S. for the month of February alone, there were four major school shooting incidents resulting in deaths. From Columbine to Virginia Tech, from Sanford, FL to homes and city streets all over the country, how long must this go on?

Apparently, we like our children, but we LOVE OUR GUNS MORE. Really? Stand your ground laws as an excuse to to stalk, chase and then murder? Really? The right to carry arms to public events and political events. Really?

NRA be damned. Constantly expanding Second Amendments rights with no regard for outcomes or the safety of our children is as obscene as the tragedy that Trayvon’s Martin’s family must endure.

This is not about gun rights. It is about the firearms industry. Rein in the NRA and take their money (its power) out of politics! Limit “right to carry” and “stand your ground” laws. The U.S. firearms industry can not sell enough weapons or make enough money to bring these children back.

A Word from the Author

In a way, I really admire Republicans. It NEVER ceases to amaze me how they manage year after year to get SO MANY Americans to vote against their own self-interests again and again. They are brilliant, though cynical. I am afraid they are on the verge of doing irreparable harm. In the name of patriotism, they want to dismantle our government. They have taken Ronald Reagan's words as gospel, believing that government is the casue of all of our problems and that can remedy none of them. They have politicized nearly every aspect of government, orchestrated assaults on the separation of church and state, science, attorneys, the courts, higher education and even the Constitution itself. We have allowed ourselves to fall victim to the propaganda that led to war in Iraq without a critical analysis of arguments in support of the decision. Global warming appears real and is worsening while we fail to act. Our economy is in shambles. The housing crisis deepens. Our currency has lost substantially in value, and our manufacturing base is a remnant of what is was only a decade ago, with our jobs leaving for foreign lands, while big business sits on billions of dollars and giant corporations in banking, oil and energy remain largely under-regulated. We seem to have surrendered our future to a political discourse that descends to the lowest common denominator, usually influenced by fear, personal attack and destruction, rather than dispassionate consideration of the merits. If we are going to thrive once again, something has got to change. Here is my small contribution to that end. I will try to respond to what I read in the news, but I am NOT a scholar. I leave it to others to fact check, follow up and support my points, but I refuse to continue to sit quietly while our demacracy is subverted and turned to the support of wealthy, powerful and cynical interests.