"President Obama is coming for your guns".
We've been hearing that cry from the paranoid right, egged on by the spooky gun industry lobbyist Wayne La Pierre and the National Rifle Association, since before the 2008 Presidential election.
6 years and multiple mass shootings later, our jack-booted Muslim dictator has still not begun the great gun round-up. But no doubt, he's coming. Yes, he's coming.
A convenient moment for the President to come and take at least one gun occurred this past Tuesday when one lone gun nut, apparently celebrating Georgia's new "Guns Everywhere" law, took to a Forsyth County, Georgia park where a Little League baseball game was taking place, pistol tucked in his waistband, taunting anyone who passed: "See my gun? Look, I got a gun and there's nothing you can do about it." I've never approved of the administration's use of weaponized drones but I would have made an exception in this case.
And he was correct. Despite 22 calls from worried parents to 911, there was nothing Sheriff's deputies could do because he was permitted. What a horrible situation we have created where we have no recourse to take action in a situation like this. We have to wait until someone is harmed. And even then we can no longer depend on the courts to be able to mete out justice as the loathsome "stand your ground" laws proliferate, thanks again to the gun industry and right-wing lobbying groups like ALEC. So no, President Obama is not coming for the guns. Yet gun lobbyist continue to stoke the fears of the paranoid right so that lunatics buy more and more guns and are children are placed at ever increasing risk.
The parents present in this park had good reason to be distraught. Remember this nut in Plainwell, Michigan who posted video of his encounter with police officers while engaging in some kind of warped open carry demonstration walking the town streets? He graduated from simple gun nut to murderer not long after, shooting his girlfriend after an an argument and then turning the gun on himself. (His girlfriend was the daughet of one of the officers who had confronted him).
And now in the the past week we've experienced a whole army of these freaks raising arms against our public officials at the Bundy Ranch. Who wants this this kind of world? Are we going to let Wayne LaPierre and the NRA and their legion of paranoid, dim-witted, gullible followers turn our country into a battle zone in order to further enrich the gun industry? And yet still we fail to hold our legislators feet to the fire, fail to make them pay for their obeisance to the gun industry.
This fall we have another chance. And now we have reinforcements.
This week, as Wayne La Pierre delivered his latest unhinged rant to the NRA's annual meeting, the new organization, Everytown for Gun Safety, commenced its frontal attack on the NRA. Uniting Moms Demand Action and bolstered by $50 million from former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Everytown showed up in Indianapolis where the NRA was meeting and held a press conference to launch a new ad campaign and to publicize a new report, Not Your Grandparents’ NRA, highlighting that organization's extreme positions and the ruthless tactics it has used to block any reasonable gun safety legislation. Here's Everytown's new ad:
Everytown should make a difference in our fight for sane gun policy, but this fall's election is critical. It is so important that we let our Senators and Congressmen hear from us in the roll-up to the fall election and so important that we turn out to vote. A Republican majority in both houses could spell the end of hope to reverse this insanity for a long, long time.