It will be a time, Christmas included, that will never be forgotten in Newtown, Connecticut. A crazed individual with two, semi-automatic pistols and a semi-automatic rifle, managed to kill 26 people. In this case, however, 20 of them were first-grade-age children. Little, tiny kids, and he was dressed in black, military fatigues and a protective military vest as if he were going to war. What insanity! What illness makes you feel superior when you are gunning down small children? I saw a headline crawl that the President is soft-pedaling his attack on the gun laws that allow an idiot like this to have weapons like these in his hands. The NRA slogan that guns don’t kill people, it’s people who kill people, is pure hogwash. Here’s what we mean. If this man in his early 20s had gotten into that school with a knife, a baseball bat, or some other kind of club, somebody may have died. But it sure as hell would not have been 20 children and six adults. It can happen about anywhere in America and it has … Arizona, Oregon, Colorado, Wisconsin, and now Connecticut. Connecticut has strict gun laws, but it goes to show that a fool can get hold of a legitimate weapon and become a killer. To make him less of a killer, take away his bullet-firing weapons.
On these gun shows that dot the countryside in gymnasiums and places like that, you can buy any kind of weapon without a weapons check or a check on the person buying it, and slip under every law there is to control the ownership of weapons. No country in the civilized world allows people to own semi-automatic weaponry except America. The cry of “I keep my weapons to fend off personal attacks” is ludicrous. In the state of Utah, they give you a gun permit that’s good in about 20 different states. So you become a pistol-packing papa, or pistol-packing mama. We have more guns in private citizen possession than any country in the world … in the world. They have not deterred crime and they have increased the number of murders and crime-related usage of guns.
There is not one of the little kids’ deaths worth the entire structure and political poison of the NRA.
We are the laughing stock of the world for allowing the massacre of innocent children and innocent citizens just so you can carry a gun. This issue should never be a political issue. Never, never, never! How many children do we have to see die prematurely before even the NRA members realize that the organization they belong to is propagating the deaths of innocents. I suspect the children who died in Newtown, Connecticut, belong to Democrats, Republicans, and those who just don’t care about politics. But dead is dead, and this country is going down the sewer drain because of plain, old-fashioned stupidity.
Ronn Mott, a longtime radio personality in Terre Haute, writes commentaries for the Tribune-Star. His pieces are published online Tuesday and Thursday on Tribstar.com, and in the print and online editions on Saturday.
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RONN MOTT: What fools we be
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