FB Adventures: Hands Off My Guns!!!

This appeared on my feed today:

"Dear Mr President you and your puppets are trying to take our rights to guns away look what happened yesterday to that 8 yr old kid and the others that died a gun could have killed the terrorist think about what you and your puppets are doing Thank you"

My response:

No one's going to make all guns illegal. It would require a Constitutional Amendment, and those are very, very difficult to achieve. In this case, impossible. On one hand, you have the Congressmen who are shills for the NRA. On the other, you have Congressmen who represent states that rely heavily on hunting for either tourism or survival. There are still many places in this country where if you do not hunt, you do not eat. I grew up in the Smokies, in Appalachia, and taking away their guns would leave them to starve to death. Not to mention that you do need protection from the occasional rabid animal. There's no reasoning with a sick or injured bear!

The only guns in jeopardy of being banned are assault weapons. People have been trying to get them banned for decades, long before Obama became President. And they have failed, for decades.

Every time a move is made to ban assault weapons or guns/ammo in any form, the media whips the public into a frenzy about how the government is going to take away everybody's guns. It's never true, but people continue to believe it, ensuring that no sensible law concerning guns can pass.

A good example is the law known as the Brady Act. It's named after James Brady, who got shot by John Hinkley, Jr during the assassination attempt on President Reagan in 1981. For over a decade, gun proponents and media (fueled by the NRA) tried to convince people that the Brady Act would take away all our guns and destroy the Second Amendment.

Do you know what the Brady Act actually did? Required background checks. That's it.

Again: no one is going to take your guns. We can't even get assault weapons banned, much less handguns. And I am one of many people who would gladly welcome a ban on assault weapons but would fight like hell if they tried to outlaw guns all together. I know what it's like to need to hunt to survive. I know what it's like to participate in Tribal hunts. And as a former stalking victim, I know how important it is to be able to protect yourself AND how important it is that background checks are national, quick and effective.

Finally, no gun could have saved any of the victims of the Boston Marathon Bombing. People who set those kinds of bombs usually don't stick around where they could get hurt by their own terrorism (suicide bombers are the exception, and rare). Most of these cowardly animals want to revel in the carnage they've caused, want to be upheld as a "hero" to the people who share their cause (think abortion clinic bombers and environmental terrorists). They make bombs, and they make them in such a way as to ensure their cowardly behinds are safe when it explodes as others suffer and die.

No one knows who did this yet. They planted the bombs and got out of there. The victims never saw the face(s) of the despicable lowlifes who caused this carnage, and even if they did...they had no way of knowing which person in the crowd detonated the bomb. I doubt he wore an "I am about to bomb your ass" t-shirt. No gun could have killed the terrorist because there was no way of knowing WHO the terrorist was. We still don't know who did this; how could an armed racer know who to shoot? You would also have to own a crystal ball and be able to predict who the terrorist was BEFORE the bomb detonated. Once it did, the deaths were going to occur whether the terrorist was shot or not. It was too late.

What happened yesterday was a tragedy for Boston and a tragedy for America. Please don't compound the tragedy by using it to justify unfounded gun-stealing fears about a President and his "puppets." Focus instead on the victims of this crime and pray the perpetrators are apprehended before they can kill anymore 8-year-olds.