There is yet another mass shooting , this time in Washington D.C., at a U.S. Naval shipyard. The shooter, Aaron Alexis was a Navy Reservist and supposedly was having some serious mental problems at the time. Twelve people were killed and the shooter was taken out by law enforcement in a 30-minute gun battle.
I am sure we can expect a few ripples of activity from Democrats wanting to renew gun legislation but give it a couple of weeks and it will be old news. Then, we wait until the next mass shooting, so we can once again talk about our desire for gun control, but it will go nowhere. The mass shooting of twelve people will get just a little whimper and a reminder from some voices from the Left, that we really need some gun laws in this country.
However, the NRA's Wayne La Pierre and his supporters will come out fighting. A great deal of money and a few threats to lawmakers will be thrown around, and any legislation for gun control will fall into that bottomless pit known as the chambers of the U.S. House of Representatives, thanks in no small part to the NRA.
The majority of Americans do not get to decide what kind of gun control we have, not even gun owners or NRA members for that matter, just the leadership of the NRA and they say nay, at everything. The reason why the NRA keeps winning and keeping our nation from instituting any decent gun control laws is that the NRA's voice and the voices of those its money is behind, speak louder than the voice of those who want gun control.
Two state legislators in Colorado lost their jobs by a recall, over their support of gun control legislation that was passed by the state legislature, shortly after the Newtown, CT. elementary school shooting. The reason they lost their job was not that their legislation was unpopular in the state, but that it was unpopular with the NRA and those gun enthusiast who the NRA riled up enough to go out and vote in that recall election of those two state legislators, thereby causing them to lose their jobs. The point here is, where was the support at the polls needed to overcome those recalls? Is it simply enthusiasm or is gun control important enough to us, or will it be our children next in the line of fire?
Let us wait until the next time another killer takes out a bunch of kids. Then, we will rage for a while and maybe a couple of well-meaning legislators will write another piece of legislation for background checks and the NRA will do what it always does and use its influence and money to kill it. It would seem the gun lobby carries a great deal of sway in Congress, particularly in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives.
Our nation I believe has become desensitized to a certain point when it comes to mass shooting. The first thing we want to know is that it is not in our town and not our loved ones or anyone we know who is the victim, and it is not us. Then, we shake our heads and feel sorry for the victims for a moment but soon our thoughts are elsewhere.
Certainly, when 20 elementary school students are mowed down by a killer with a gun, the anesthesia of multiple mass killings wears off a bit and we check ourselves and realize just how badly the killing of small children affects us personally.
The killing of small children is the exception to the desensitizing because mass shootings usually does not involve small children, but what if the mass killing of small children also became commonplace? Does that mean we as a society will eventually become numb to the death of children, as long as they are not our children?
Many of us I think, have accepted there is nothing we can do about gun control, and that is because the Second Amendment says we do not have the right to gun control, according to what the NRA tells us. Wayne La Pierre, the top spokesperson for the NRA has told us that the only thing protecting us from a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. What he does not tell us is that many of those bad guys were good guys until they did something bad, and sometimes that bad thing they done, was with a gun.
Bar fights can turn deadly with just a knife around, but give a mean drunk a gun in a bar and see how many he takes out. Sometimes those mean drunks are law-abiding citizens too, until they have had a few drinks, and then watch out.
Perhaps it is time America speaks loud enough that our legislators will stand to attention when it comes to gun control. Otherwise, maybe we will simply do what we always do and just let it go, forget about it, until next time America, until next time.
This is a republish from my website: Fidlerten Place