This is what passes for debate on the issue of the laws to regulate the right bear arms under 2nd Amendment:
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A bullet-riddled target was deposited outside the League of Women Voters of Seattle-King County at some point during the three-day Fourth of July weekend, an action which the League links to its support of Initiative 594 on the November ballot.
The League’s offices on Capitol Hill “were targeted last weekend by an individual who left a shooting range target sheet pierced by numerous bullet holes,” the non-partisan voter activist group said in a statement sent to reporters on Tuesday.
“Sometime between Thursday evening and Saturday, a person or persons left the shot-up target at a doorstep outside the Seattle-King County office.”
The League of Women Voters of Seattle-King County has joined a coalition backing I-594, which would close the “gun show loophole” in Washington by requiring that firearms purchasers at gun shows and on-line undergo a criminal background check.
We are not having a debate on reasonable measures to regulate gun ownership in this country. We have debates about the extent of the first amendment. But despite all the incidents of gun violence in this country, after Columbine, Aurora, Gabby Gifford, Newtown, Tayvon Martin, The Naval Yard Killings, et cetera, st cetera, et cetera the debate is over.
One side has asked and pleaded for reasonable regulation of gun ownership: universal background checks, limiting magazine capacity, registration, and even merely studies of the public health issues related to gun ownership.
The other side leaves targets with bullet holes in them to intimidate those who support gun regulation. It publishes the names and addresses of people who support gun regulation. It assembles in groups to parade around with semi-automatic military style weapons at department stores and restaurants. It demonizes any person who dares to argue for reasonable laws regarding gun safety. It sends death threats to a gun manufacturer who proposed to market guns with technology that would prevent their firearms from being fired by anyone other than the owner. It supports, with some success I might add, laws that extend the right of people to carry firearms into bars and restaurants where alcohol is served, churches, and all public spaces (except where legislators are present, natch.)
As Jennifer Mascia, a reporter who documented gun shootings for the New York Times for the paper's Gun Report blog before it was recently terminated, stated:
A few days after the plug was pulled on the Gun Report in early June, there were school shootings in Portland and Seattle, and two officers in Las Vegas, along with another man, were shot and killed by anti-government extremists who then committed suicide. To be silenced while all this was going on was excruciating. I burned at not being able to cover it.
But there will always be shootings. I could write gun reports until the end of my natural life, and given the apathy in Congress, the sheer volume will never diminish. I am not even sure much will change within the next few generations.
We will continue to report about the absurd state of our gun laws, I suppose, but the reality is that there is no real debate over the issue of gun regulation. The bad guys have won. And yes, I will call people "bad guys" who oppose reasonable regulation of guns, while advocating for laws such as the infamous "Stand Your Ground" and "The Guns Everywhere" legislation which is being implemented as we speak. Good guys would not act so irresponsibly toward their fellow Americans merely to allow the people who should never be allowed near a gun the unfettered right to acquire them. Good guys would not support laws that make the "lawful" use of firearms in situations our founding fathers never contemplated.
As a nation, we have lost our collective minds on this issue. The Wild, Wild West was a myth constructed by Hollywood. The gun violence we see today across the country is, sadly, all too real, and yet our politicians all too often either do nothing or promote even more insane measures to allow the deadly use of firearms by individuals, some felons, some deranged, some simply fearful and trigger happy, some intoxicated and many just plain careless and reckless, to proliferate.
I can only hope that in another generation Americans will have come to their senses, and treat firearms as a right that is subject to reasonable regulations just as any other right encompassed in the Constitution. For now, the Black Hats are riding gleefully into the sunset, leaving behind enormous profits for gun manufacturers and a trail of blood and sorrow among thousands of victims of gun violence and their families each year in their wake.