Category Archives: Gun Control

Return to Sanity Needed

22 Tuesday Jan 2019

Posted by in Gun Control, Politics

≈ Leave a comment

The National Rifle Association is an international organization persuading people around the world to buy guns. In other countries they can con people into buying more guns by saying more guns the safer they are. Do the slogans they use in the other countries sound familiar? “Guns are our guarantee of freedom.” and “The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”

When I was a member about sixty years ago, the NRA taught me how to load, fire, and unload without shooting anyone. Then they rented an office and wore off-the-rack suits. Now they have a skyscraper and multi-thousand dollar suits.

What changed? Lots and lots of money provided mostly by entities other than American membership. The third of a billion dollars, which they got in 2016 and 2017, comes from others including the gun manufacturers. The purpose of their financial support is for the NRA to push the sale of guns around the world.

According to Bloomberg’s January 7 issue our laws for donations have been skirted. During 2017 we imported over 760,000 Taurus guns from Brazil. In lieu of direct donations they gave a NRA membership to each buyer. At $35 per membership, that’s over 25 million dollars in 2017. The American sales office for a Belgium manufacturer legally gave $200,000 in 2013, CEO Ugo Gussalli Beretta pledged a million in 2008. Glock’s VP Josh Dorsey gave over a million in 2017 alone.

Americans own over 390 million guns and the NRA is pushing us to buy more for safety. Oddly, the more guns we buy the more people are killed. The last full year’s numbers for 196 nations shows the number of deaths in the top six countries are: Brazil’s 43.2K, United States’ 37.2K, Mexico’s 15.4K, Columbia’s 13.3K, Venezuela’s 12.8K, and Guatemala’s 5.1K. Notice all six are rife with gangs, guns, and drugs. The three go together in high death rate countries.

The United Kingdom is a regulated low ownership, low murder rate nation. Australia tightened its regulations and lowered its deaths in a few years. States with the most regulated gun controls have fewer murders. European countries have fewer guns and fewer deaths than we do. The more lobbying in a nation’s political system will lead to more deregulation and guns.

Here the NRA has gotten millions to believe everyone should have many guns. Their lobbying efforts and their membership have scared many of our local, state, and federal lawmakers into doing what the manufacturers want. The NRA moves the goal posts deeper into anarchy every year. I remember went they pushed for gun safety devices only to turn against Smith and Wesson when they developed one.

A dream would be for sanity to return to Americans and for the NRA to return to their roots.

Greed Created the Problem

08 Saturday Dec 2018

Posted by in Drugs, Gun Control

≈ Leave a comment

What have we done and how can we fix it? Do all our problems revolve around billions of dollars? Money must be the common root cause of our problems. No, we can’t eliminate money. It is how wealth and power are demonstrated and it runs through the problems discussed below.

Drug abuse is a general term for over prescribed drugs like Oxycodone and Fentanyl which caused many people to move on to street drugs like heroin, marijuana, and cocaine with its derivatives. The prescription drugs have been over prescribed by doctors because the drug companies pushed them. They said they were not addictive so the companies could make more money. The cartels sell the addicts drugs when the prescriptions run out. The drugs make money from the Columbian growers to the street dealers. Legal and illegal drugs make billions.

When I was a kid, the gangs in cities would have fights over territories and slights or no reason. Their weapons were usually homemade zip guns, knives, and bats. Not its automatic pistols and assault guns. Why? – because the money goes to the manufacturers who have flooded us with weapons for their billions. The lobbyists and the NRA have made billions by conning people into thinking they are necessary for protection from the guns they sold.

The gangs selling the drugs and buying and selling the guns are an invention of our addictions and greed. We created our own disasters and we don’t know how to fix them. We don’t seem to get off drugs and we can’t seem to get over the childish fascination with guns. Our country would be much better off if we could quit our drug addiction and melt 200 million guns.

Words, Not Actions

02 Friday Mar 2018

Posted by in Assault Weapons, Gun Control

≈ Leave a comment

To my former National Rifle Association supporter friends (they are still my friends but not still supporting the NRA), we need to speak and out donate to the campaigns of those wanting to enact sensible gun control laws. As long as the NRA is able to sit in their huge office building (Bankruptcy sale is my dream.) and decide who will be president, senator, congressman, governor or state legislator, we will not have meaningful gun laws.

The Second Amendment of the Constitution states “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” The far right leaning judges in US Supreme Court used an obscure letter from a dissident founding father to allow for wholesale purchase of guns. How can anyone misconstrue a precisely worded sentence stating a city dweller, farmer, or a frontiersman must have an arm, preferably a rifle, to use in a militia call-up. The written intent is every man with a gun is in the militia. That would be the State National Guard today. The amendment was added because the founders did not want to trade one domineering government with a big army for another. The ones for adding the amendment called George Washington “King George” because they thought he would use his army to become a dictator. They thought militias could stand up to professional troops so they kept the army small and put their faith in the militia.

Apparently the rights can be restricted when the far right and the NRA deems it agreeable. The NRA often deceives us by saying one thing in public after an event and then quietly pushing for no change or easing existing laws. Unless and until the Supreme Court comes to its senses and the NRA quits running Congress, nothing significant will be changed to the people’s good.

A New Children’s Crusade

02 Friday Mar 2018

Posted by in Assault Weapons, Gun Control

≈ Leave a comment

Fifty-three years ago I took a European History course. One of the things I remember is a crusade some crazy monk came up with involving kids. If failed of course, because they either starved or were killed before leaving Europe. They had religion as their reason.

Today kids are leading a crusade against assault weapons that have killed more than a hundred school kids from Colorado to Florida. I think this crusade might have a far better ending than the last. Although unarmed, these kids are the spearhead of a movement with legs. The publicity is causing companies to break away from the NRA and applying pressure to politicians in Florida and around the country.

The Fourth Federal District Court of Appeals just agreed in 11 to 4 vote that Connecticut can ban 45 assault guns and magazines capable of holding over ten bullets. Perhaps the donated money from four billionaires totaling two million dollars will allow for transporting, feeding, and lodging students from across America. The students may now be able to re-institute the ten year ban on assault guns on a permanent basis. We may be the only country allowing private ownership of guns. (In Israel they are owned by the army.)

Would it be feasible for these kids to arouse the people enough to turn our gun oriented society around? Is the crusade strong enough to topple the NRA with its hundreds of millions of dollars scaring common people into worrying about race war, home invaders looking for guns, rapists, and other crimes? The NRA and the gun lobby must stop controlling members of Congress and brainwashing Americans to make second amendment commonsense. We have updated other Amendments, so why not the second?

Don’t Ban – Tax!

21 Wednesday Feb 2018

Posted by in Gun Control

≈ Leave a comment

School shootings, drive-bys, concerts, and just plain knocking a few people off for no reason seems to have become the norm. If you put out a daily tally of shootings, at least one each week would be with a weapon classed as an assault gun. Most people consider an assault gun to be a rifle with the ability to shoot rapidly and utilize a large capacity magazine.

The half-wits on the Supreme Court decided that almost everyone has a constitutional right to carry a gun and I don’t think they ever said what a person can’t have. I thought laws were passed during the prohibition days making Tommy guns and sawed-off shotguns illegal. The documentary said the law didn’t ban them but made the owners pay a $1,000 to own one.

Whether there was a ban or not, it wouldn’t get past the N.R.A.’s approval and their brainwashed membership who have been told so many lies. Congress is so scared of them they wet their pants when the N.R.A. growls.

Perhaps we should trick them by continuing to allow the sale of assault guns but slap an extra tax of $20,000 on each one and a $1,000 on each magazine capable of holding over eight bullets. All retail stores, gun shows, or private sales, gifts, and estate sales would have to pay the tax. Any gun or magazine not taxed and found outside the home will be taxed at $100,000. The gun will be confiscated until the tax is paid.

This complies with the right to bear arms, but I bet you will see a lot less of them. If congress had the guts to pass such a law without loopholes, assault guns would not be the easy-to-get weapon to kill so many of us in a couple of minutes.

Quiet Guns

06 Friday Oct 2017

Posted by in Gun Control, Politically Correct

≈ Leave a comment

Until a few years ago an incident where three people were killed and twenty wounded wasn’t considered a mass shooting. It required four dead. Now it is based on number shot.

The gun manufactures, through the NRA and other groups, got their stooges in Congress to overthrow Reagan era gun control laws and buying a gun became a sacred right. People were told to buy guns to protect themselves from Obama’s people; the military would confiscate them to prevent crime. After everyone bought one, Congress decided to let you buy $1,000 silencers.

The above 92 words represent the average number of Americans killed by gunfire each day in the United States.