I RECEIVED THIS EMAIL FROM SENATOR DURBIN THIS AM:
Professor Peter --
Have we really reached a point in this nation where shooting a congresswoman point blank in the face or killing a roomful of first graders in Connecticut no longer moves us?
I don't believe that for a minute.
In the month since the devastating Newtown massacre, momentum is growing to do something about the number of gun murders in this country:
We announced several gun-safety bills in Congress since the new session began last week; Vice President Biden's guns task force is expected to make its recommendations by the end of this month; and prominent leaders like Retired General McChrystal, Former Representative Giffords, and New York Mayor Bloomberg have publicly endorsed gun control proposals.
Despite the growing majority demanding solutions to gun violence, the NRA's tone-deaf response -- that the solution to shooting rampages like the one at Sandy Hook Elementary School is to increase the presence of guns in schools -- reminds us of what we're up against.
And it reminds us that we won't prevail until we lead -- it is our obligation to increase the drumbeat for change until real reforms are in place.
Nearly 19,000 grassroots activists like you have signed on to the Committed Majority for Sensible Gun Laws. Will you join them?
Click here to add your name to our petition at CommittedMajority.com: Call on this Congress to institute reasonable limits on firearms now.
We advocate for simple, commonsense solutions:
Bar those with a history of serious mental instability or violent crime from owning weapons;
Outlaw the sale of weapons that are strictly for military use and have no useful purpose in sport, hunting, or self defense;
Ban magazine clips with more than ten rounds from civilian use;
Restrict the number of firearms a person can buy in a month;
Require firearms within the reach of children to have protective locks.
We the people must find the courage to act for the good of our nation and the safety of our families. And to do that, I need your support today.
Thank you,
Dick Durbin
U.S. Senator
Take action
MY REPLY:
Dear Senator Durbin:
I am against the very idea of ANYONE having automatic weapons, so please read the whole article before replying:
FIRST I AM A VETERAN AND A LIFELONG FDR PROGRESSIVE:
It seems to me sir, that all of the murders of which you speak were committed with guns obtained legally. I do not think that anyone, including: Police, Homeland Security, or private citizens should own automatic weapons.
On the other hand, I am surprised to see such a letter because I find that in the light of the US arming and supporting mass murders and the destabilization of several sovereign nations and assassinations of their leaders, a thing I always believed was limited to Nazi, Fascist, nations and was against International law and the Geneva Convention, that it appears a bit hypocritical now to suddenly desire armed limitations upon citizens who believe that God Loving men and women everywhere SHOULD be armed to protect themselves and their neighbor's from several sources of danger, ala: Murderers, home breakers, an attack upon law abiding citizens by their own military or National Guard, or homicidal Police Force ala of a (Gestapo Geheimes Polizeiamt), lunatics or by some insane depopulation, leader, somewhere down the road. In Illinois we have sent several Governors to jail, would we want any of them to have an army at their disposal?
So, I remain ambivalent. We had a president who was AWOL during the Viet Nam who when he was elected president had a change of mind about going to war as long as he was not in harm's way. He then killed more than one million people in the mid-east and made several million homeless there while wrecking our economy by pouring $19 trillion on wars and allowing idiot bankers to run roughshod all over American Citizens. As if that was not bad enough, now we have a president who never served in the military, but since he is not in harms way seems to enjoy killing more people. But almost as bad he is further wrecking our economy with zero interest rates on savings, he encourages NOT SAVING MONEY, thus eliminating at a 5% interest on savings $385 billions a year in discretionary income, wiped out for Americans, and thus dooming the upper middle and middle classes. And at the same time in addition to the expenditure of $1.2 Trillions a year killing people, and another $1 trillion a year by Mr.Bernanke enriching bankers at a rate of $40 billions to $80 Billions a month, thus draining our Treasury further and/or printing useless dollars which is creating a looming depression/Inflation that will make a millions dollars barely enough to buy a milk shake and yet he refuses to allow an Audit of the FED. (do you get that, because I do not?)
I suggest that this administration stop looking for diversions and get to the point of DOMESTIC job creation. He appears to do anything to avoid creating jobs which is the most elementary matter of Creating and laying upon the treasonous outsourcing US corporations, an Excise Tax of 5% - 10% above the cost of our domestic Manufactured products applied to ALL jobs and manufacturing outsourced outside of the 50 states and forget about wars and guns until that is taken care of.
You may have noted that it has been exclusively, unemployed or underemployed crazies who have committed ALL of the mass murders of the past few years and further the guns and ammunition that they used were legally obtained by them or a part of their own parents collections, or their own purchases.
There are nations around the glob which have the same proportion of weapons per citizen, as do we, yet are not having similar killing sprees.
Most of those killing sprees have come during illegal wars in which an example of murder and assassination seems quite normal to our leaders of late. That is a rather poor and hypocritical way to separate the many thousands of murders done overseas from murders done here is in not? IN my theology and Ethic is certainly is. Tell the president to start doing good and not evil and grow some jobs and if he is not up to that task, tell him I will be happy to do the job creation for him between my own projects and my price will certainly be below his $72,000 income per month return on his investments. Maybe he should let some those who lost their homes in on his secret means of creating such income? Is that income an Entitlement?
Any way Good luck and I hope you can find an ethical argument for the killings presidents have done and are doing overseas and killings they seemed to have have inspired to do here in out of work America.
Professor Emeritus Peter Bagnolo