OK, WHERE DO YOU SIT REGARDING GUN CONTROL AND ASSAULT RIFLES?

….Just a few of the confiscated, Black Market semi-automatic assault weapons

 

The NRA continues to scare the GOP from passing a commonsense gun law?

 

OK, here’s my question about gun control:

 

Is it not possible to create a good and necessary law that everyone can agree, or at least a majority in Congress?   Apparently not.

 

We live in a world that requires a certain kind of law to address a specific kind of problem. It is not only for the terrorists in our midst, but it is also for the loopholes that allow the ill or the bad actors of all faiths, ethnicities and races to purchase guns.  This law should not just deal with radical Islamists for buying firearms, but should include anyone buying assault weapons. Closing those loopholes and ridding society of weapons we know to be mass-killing machines are the most sane things we should do.

 

 

But the Republicans in Congress are too scared of three, little, letters: NRA.

 

Now, after the murder of 49 people in an Orlando gay nightclub, the United States is once again going back to the same old melodrama.  The Washington politicians are doing a repeat of past arguments while American citizens are required to retreat into our boarded up homes and to follow the same old routines.

 

This week, the Senate Democrats and Republicans rolled out four gun-control bills, two from each side, both attached as amendments to the Commerce, Justice and Science appropriations bill.

 

And, of course, given that 60 votes were needed to pass, none was expected to pass and all four bills failed to pass.  Only a few Republicans voted for the bills.  (The NRA continues to scare the hell out of all Republican politicians.)

 

Of all the noise that’s been made, the only things anyone can agree upon, including the National Rifle Association (NRA), is that terrorists shouldn’t have guns……..Really?  That’s all.  But……that is something.....I guess.

 

However, the display by the Republicans in the US Congress was as usual, totally disgusting.

 

Between the Second Amendment nuts, and the most thoughtful American citizens, the bugaboo is in their trying to balance the “constitutional right to bear arms” with the right to “avoid being killed by a nut with a semiautomatic weapon”.

 

Why is this so hard to figure out?  We are no longer prehistoric cave dwellers trying to learn how to control fire…..or are we?

 

What’s the big deal in having a proposal for background checks and the few days of inconvenience for someone who wants to buy a gun? In the nutshell of reality, that’s all the initial issue really is.

 

The Democrats rightly want to close the loopholes at gun shows and for buying guns on-line by requiring universal background checks.  Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) proposed a previously defeated “no-fly, no-buy” bill that would at least prevent people on terrorist watch lists from buying a gun.  But once again, the GOP’s in Congress shot it down.

 

In a separate version of this idea, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) proposed that the attorney general can delay a gun purchase for anyone who has been part of a terrorism investigation in the past five years.  But the senator’s idea is ridiculous because it’s only for a three day delay.  And if the investigation is not completed in three days, the approval to purchase is approved anyway. 

 

 

That’s exactly what happened that allowed the mentally defected, Dylann Roof, in Charleston, S.C., to be allowed to buy the gun he used to kill 9 local black church goers at a prayer meeting.

 

Fortunately for the Democrats in congress, they continue to say Cornyn’s idea is too limiting…..ya think?

 

For some reason, this issue is just too demanding for these simpleton’s to figure out an answer….?   For Pete’s sake, why can’t you all get together and come up with a workable plan?

 

The not so bright Senator Charles “Chuck” Grassley (R-IA), yes, the same senator Grassley that said that Obamacare would “pull the plug on Grandma”, he had another ridiculous proposal that would allow a terrorism suspect to buy a weapon, but it would ensure that the FBI be notified.  So what?  Then the FBI would do what exactly? 

 

Essentially, all that proposal would have done is to protect the terrorist’s Second Amendment rights, while it would only pretend to protect innocent Americans.  For this to possibly work, the FBI would need to conduct 24/7 surveillance, or the possible terrorist could instead become a real terrorist, while proceeding to slaughter all his co-workers attending his company’s annual Christmas party.

 

And this does nothing for banning military-style assault weapons or the 30 round capacity magazines. 

 

 

Remember, it was the mentally defected Adam Lanza who killed 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School.  Lanza would very likely have not been successful, but for his Bushmaster .223 caliber model XM15 rifle with its 30-round capacity magazines. Lanza was able to fired off 154 shots in less than five minutes.

 

Oh, and what about whether the ban on military-style assault weapons that expired in 2004 should be reinstated?  Hillary Clinton has called for renewing the ban, but as expected, Donald Trump has Tweeted  his promise to preserve Americans’ right to keep their military style assault weapons.

 

As always, every gun control debate ultimately centers on: “Where on the continuum of constitutional rights does one person’s interpretation of the Second Amendment become secondary to another’s right to survive in that interpretation?”

 

My interpretation is that it is the right of the greatest number of people to live, and that over-rides the right of those few who wish to own weapons intended to give us mass casualties.

 

That’s where I am coming from on gun control. 

 

How about you?

 

Copyright G.Ater  2016