Saturday Thoughts

Yet another mass shooting happened this week and predictably, right-wing extremists are trying to deflect away the blame from where it belongs…gun violence. There are restrictions on fertilizer and you have to take off your shoes for TSA because of murders and attempted murders involving those two things…but people really can’t handle restrictions on guns? Here’s why…the NRA…the most corrupt and dishonest lobbyist group in America. They fill the pockets of hundreds of politicians with the sole goal of selling more guns from the gun manufacturers that fund them, They use those bought politicians as sales people and con the gullible public into thinking that the politicians that won’t take their blood money want to take away their guns…when that’s not even remotely the case. Gun sales soared during the Obama Presidency...because gullible schmucks were conned into thinking he was going to try to take them away.


Now, I’m as pro-2nd Amendment as anyone but many people who love that amendment don’t understand it. Nowhere does it state that there can’t be regulations on gun ownership. People need a vocabulary lesson on the meaning of the word “infringed.” It doesn’t mean regulated or restricted…it means that the right to keep and bear arms shall not be taken away.


There have to be regulations and the ones that are in place are a joke, apparently. The shooter in Florida had red flags aplenty but still passed a background check? Those background checks are clearly not working. The fact that the FBI didn’t do their jobs and investigate and confiscate his gun after he made terroristic threats on the Internet could’ve saved lives but he shouldn’t have had that type of gun in the 1st place. One of those regulations that should be in place that isn’t would be to put people with mental issues on a list that would keep them away from guns like those. Sadly, that is a regulation that was undone by Trump. This isn’t to say this week’s shooting is on Trump…the gun was bought before he undid that restriction and Cruz’s mental issues weren’t covered under the restrictions that had been in place. Instead of undoing those regulations, a responsible President would make them tougher.


People in general aren’t advocating for taking away guns…just ensuring that people who aren’t sane, that are shown to have criminal intentions, shouldn’t be allowed to get them. People like to claim that someone who wants a gun will get it, legally or not…but by that reasoning, why have laws at all? When you remove the legality of something, you make it harder to get…that does deter some people. While that won’t prevent all murders, it WILL save lives. There is no fool-proof way of saving everyone as much as we’d like there to be but if you think that a mentally disturbed individual having a gun is more important than saving the lives of innocent children, you might be mentally disturbed yourself.


Again, this is NOT about taking away guns…if you believe I’m saying anything of the sort, take a remedial reading class. If you believe politicians are trying to take guns away from law-abiding sane citizens, you’re gullible and I have some oceanfront property in Kansas to sell you. If you’re against strong background checks, then maybe the police should keep an eye on you.


Regarding the AR-15 and other guns that are commonly called assault weapons, some have said to ban those. Personally, while I think that no normal citizen has ANY need for them, my solution is to make the background checks more thorough than background checks for the basic shotgun or rifle used for hunting or the pistol used for personal home protection. You need a license to drive a car but you can’t use that license to drive a tractor trailer…and a CDL is a lot harder to get than a basic license…same principle.