Gun Violence // 18 July 2024

As a nation, we have become accustomed to gun violence. We have become immune to horror. People are dead; more could have died last week.

Four U.S. Presidents have been assassinated; others have come close. Most anyone of my generation remembers where we were when we learned that President Kennedy had been killed. We lived through the nightmare remembered as 1968. We remember Robert Kennedy’s remarks upon learning of the death of Martin Luther King.

At least one former President, Theodore Roosevelt, was similarly assaulted while campaigning to seek the Presidency once again in 1912. Why is there no outrage at the proximate cause of this heinous act -the easy availability of assault rifles?

The National Rifle Association ranks as one of the most powerful lobbying forces in the country. Until his recent ouster, Wayne LaPierre was feared in the halls of power because of his ability to unleash postcards and letters and more recently emails and texts. Candidates may speak more about the Second Amendment than any other section of our Constitution, often inaccurately, to curry favor with the NRA.

Is there any reason why someone not in the military or a police department should have access to such a weapon? Of course not. The founders never envisioned such an instrument of human destruction. A member of a colonial militia would never have contemplated setting up an assault weapon upon a hillside!

America is better than that. We overcame the forces which profited from the enslavement of human beings. We overcame those who aimed to impose their nativist Puritanical mores upon the rest of us when we succeeded in abolishing prohibition. We overcame the tobacco lobby, in my lifetime.

The list is a lengthy one. Is it not time to stand up to the NRA whose members profit from marketing instruments of death to dangerous people?

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