First, my heart goes out to all those hurt & killed in
the theatre shooting last night in Aurora, CO.
They were there for the premier of Dark
Knight Rises, sitting quietly inside, hurting no one, & a freaking lunatic destroyed what
began as an innocent evening for some adults & kids! Apparently they have the suspect in custody
but now they’ve discovered he booby-trapped his apartment. Jeesh!
They’re everywhere these days it seems.
Just last week a
shooting took place at a local mall in my town; fortunately in the parking lot so at
least no innocents were involved. It was
reported as a drug & gun deal gone badly. I’ve
only lived here 3 years but apparently this is the norm in these parts due to increasingly
high population & not enough police. To worsen matters, Virginia just passed a law
where its citizens can purchase guns in bulk as opposed to the one gun per month
law previously. (Who in heck even needed
a gun/month??) Now, this gives unscrupulous gun buyers a
chance to buy/sell them in parking lots & resell them to other thugs across
state lines. Ugh!! I realize some would
have us blame crime these days on the unemployment factor. There are some cases I’ve seen in my area
where folks stole food due to unemployment & they were not receiving public
assistance. But the way I see it, drug
& gun crimes are not primarily due to unemployment. We've all witnessed what havoc people with guns have wreaked in years of higher employment & prosperity, (Columbine for instance) so that argument is out the window. If someone’s unemployed & strapped for
cash, they shouldn’t have $$ for drugs & guns. If they do, those items are not what they
should be spending savings or unemployment on!
There’s an NRA slogan saying “Guns don’t kill people, people
kill people.” {Their point being guns usually
don't fire without human intervention, and that the real solution to violence
is not in making any certain potentially lethal device unavailable, but in
changing basic human nature from violent to peaceful.} Yeah, well good luck with THAT! I’m sure we’ll all breathe a lot easier when
the NRA comes up with that happy pill to turn the world around. But ‘till then, what if we applied the NRA
attitude & slogan towards cancer. “Cancer
doesn’t kill people, people kill people.”
That way folks can continue smoking, drinking, drugging, abusing their
bodies & when they die it’ll be called a suicide! After
all, they were the ones putting the bad stuff in their own bodies, just like
the shooters put the guns in their own hands, right?? But wait..
what about those who don’t deliberately abuse themselves and still get
cancer due to issues beyond their control?
What about those who don’t pack a pistol & still get shot due to
people with no self-control? Which one
of these scenario’s do you think could be cured the quickest, cancer or gun regulation?
It’s mind boggling isn’t it? And yet I have to say I’ve never heard of
anyone being robbed, raped, kidnapped or otherwise held up by someone
threatening them with cancer.
Sadly, our government officials and political candidates
often look the other way regarding the issues of gun control. They make grand solemn speeches offering comfort to
the families of shooting victims, but if that were your relative, would a “comfort
speech” really ease your pain & make it “right?” The NRA complains that non-gun
owners want to hold the gun manufacturers liable for crimes. I think it’s the criminals who are allowed to
continually purchase them who should be held accountable along with the
legislators & gun lobbyists who support their right to do so! Unfortunately, each time a criminal goes to
jail for using a gun illegally, it’s the taxpayer who must pay for his/her daily
keep in prison. Prisons are
overcrowded as it is now, and some inmates are paroled early to make room for
others going in. Those convicts paroled back
on the streets, getting public assistance & returning to their life of
crime, sneaking around public parking lots after dark to buy more guns & drugs either for personal use or resale are not
the victims here! Personally, I don’t want or plan to be a
victim, but especially not a victim of “irony!”
I hope this never happens to you or me, but… we never know-- the gun that may be pulled on us in a theatre
or mall by some thought depraved criminal may very well have been purchased by our
own ‘tax dollars at work.’
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http://www.kcautv.com/story/19074253/aurora-co-shooting-update-on-victims-and-investigation
UNRESTRAINED VORTICES
