Tgards79

"I grew up with guns. The .410 that I used to kill my first rabbit, the .38 pistol I carried in the Ozarks, a semi-automatic .22 rifle for shooting rats in the city dump.

My father, a World War II veteran, kept a secure gun rack in our home, a loaded Smith & Wesson beside his bed. He taught me how to load, carry, break down, clean and store deadly weapons.

At a recent high school reunion, I asked old friends whether they’d ever thought about killing our toughguy boys adviser. Had they ever contemplated firing bullets into schoolmates, their ex-girlfriend or their parents?

We graduated a long time ago. Before men carrying weapons designed to kill large numbers of people, weapons of war, opened fire in schools, churches, synagogues, nightclubs and at music festivals, killing scores of people in minutes. Before the National Rifle Association took our nation hostage, attacking anyone who might dare to suggest, even in some small way, pragmatic possibilities for ending the carnage that happens, now, on a daily basis.

After each new horror, the media focus on the killer. Was he mentally ill? Had he been bullied in school? Were his parents abusive? Was he a veteran of some war? Why didn’t someone, somewhere, see this man’s dangerous behavior and call the police, call a psychiatrist, find ways to convince him (so far, all mass murderers have been men) to confront his demons?

We watch news accounts of massacres, see traumatized survivors attempting to grasp what happened to their friends, lovers, husbands, wives, children. We listen to endless chatter about the Second Amendment, and no one talks about “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

We the people are being shot and killed everywhere, at any moment. Nevertheless, we tell ourselves, the United States is the freest county in the world. Our nation is a war zone. Fear and freedom are, absolutely, incompatible.

The solution? More guns — in homes, classrooms, houses of worship, hospitals, bars. Guns at the dinner table. Guns on the teacher’s desk. Guns in the doctor’s office.

The mantra of pure madness. Like trying to cure lung cancer by chain-smoking tobacco. Like consuming alcohol to restore a diseased liver. Like beating children to show them kindness.

No one knows where the next massacre will take place, only that it’s bound to happen. The cowardly lions in Congress, our religious leaders, institutes of higher learning, left-wing, right-wing, no-wing people won’t save us. The massacres will end when we get angry enough to say (shout) that our children’s right to “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” matters more than the “right” to manufacture, sell and buy killing machines.

If our forefathers could return to life, they would be shocked to find that people are using the great document they drafted, for which they risked their lives, to justify the pursuit of murder."