The Hammer comes down:
“We need more guns not less!”

(What surely we will hear from die hard NRA supporters)

By Linda Hammerschmid

Why wouldn’t staunch NRA members not be shouting this statement from the rafters? It is, after all, what we always hear after each and every mass shooting.

Newton, Orlando, Vegas – none of these have moved legislators to pull up their collective pants and do the right thing. Yet in America, there is a mass shooting somewhere EVERY DAY!

In the midst of all the news reports spilling out from the Parkland School Valentine shooting, the one fact that is causing me dread and alarm is reading that there have already been 18 school shootings in America TO DATE!

It seems that I must address again the latest gun deaths in the USA, this time in Florida, particularly since I am in the sunshine State. My last piece was written after the 2016 Orlando night club shootings. This time Valentine’s Day may have inspired Nikolas Cruz to open fire.

Since June 10, 2016 brought news of the fatal shooting at a concert, perpetrated by a disgruntled (obsessed) fan of former Voice Contestant Christine Grimmie, who was killed that day, there seems to be a race to chock up higher and higher casualties by shooters. While people across the nation were absorbing that pre-meditated murder another individual, unbeknownst to all during the day of June 11, was preparing an all-out assault on an LGBT club known as Pulse; a club I later read the killer had himself frequented at least a dozen times according to some observers.

… any person or group that believes the 2nd Amendment of 1791 guarantees them the right to bear AK15s is just plain ignorant and probably incapable of reasoned thought on this topic.

Fifty dead, 53 injured, tens of thousands in shock, yet worse was to come. Will anything change? As the Australian Comedian Jeff Jefferies stated in his 2013 take on gun carnage (well before the thousand plus gun deaths that have occurred since), if the NRA wasn’t moved by the massacre in December 2012 of 20 children and six adults at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, why would they be moved to police themselves over the deaths of LGBTers? An astute observation because any person or group that believes the 2nd Amendment of 1791 guarantees them the right to bear AK15s is just plain ignorant and probably incapable of reasoned thought on this topic. Here are excerpts from that routine:

“Now please understand that I understand that Australia and America are two vastly different cultures with different people. I get it. In (Port Arthur) we had the biggest massacre on Earth and the Australian government went, “That’s it, no more guns”. And we all went, “Yeah, alright then, that seems fair enough really.”

Now, in America you had the Sandy Hook massacre, where tiny little children died, and your government went, “Maybe… we’ll get rid of the big guns”. And 50 per cent of you went, “F* YOU, DON’T TAKE MY GUNS!”

You have guns because you like guns. That’s why you go to gun conventions, that’s why you read gun magazines. None of you give a shit about home security. None of you go to home security conventions, none of you read Padlock Monthly.

The result of the Australian 1996 massacre, which killed 35 + and wounded 23, was the sweeping National Firearms Program Implementation Act restricting private ownership of high capacity firearms: semi-automatic rifles, semi-automatic shotguns, pump action shotguns and introducing uniform firearms licensing rules. Bravo Australia.

‘The result of the Australian 1996 massacre… was the sweeping National Firearms Program Implementation Act restricting private ownership of high capacity firearms… and introducing uniform firearms licensing rules. Bravo Australia.’

Back after Orlando, I viewed three well-articulated and logical video posts in the aftermath of that massacre. One by a chap in London in front of the Admiral Duncan Pub, which itself is a well known gay establishment that was bombed over 17 years ago (facebook.com/the guardian). The second was by a former CIA Agent, Amaryllis Fox, who righty explained that this violence, be it homophobic or terrorist, will never end until all sides put down their weapons and learn to listen, really listen, to each other (AJ + video: ciaundercover). Her examples of the answers each group gives as a reason for their violence against one another is extremely telling. The “we do it because they did it” mentality is circular reasoning to bring about Armageddon (I confess here that I believe, and have often stated, that the extinction of the human race as we know it is inevitable and ironically in our best interests). Maybe Planet of the Apes was a foreshadowing movie?!

The third video was of President Obama (Potus NewsHour of June 2, 2016, before Orlando) found on the PBS NewsHour Media Website. For all you Obama detractors and haters, this man is so well spoken in a calm and logical way, he is a pleasure to listen to regardless of political leanings.

Unfortunately, all three speakers were preaching to the choir. As Obama said, and as we know (numbers vary slightly from report to report), given the 372 mass shootings in the USA in 2015, 432 in 2016 and 346 in 2017, gun owners don’t want to change. The NRA has a stranglehold on Congress. When people blamed Obama for doing nothing about gun control listen again to what he said: Until Congress, by majority, allows passage of stricter gun control laws, when people understand no one needs AK14s/15s and semi-automatic rifles and guns to ‘hunt’ or ‘protect’ one’s home, mass shootings will continue. Mass shootings beget mass shootings, as the above stats sadly confirm.

‘Until Congress, by majority, allows passage of stricter gun control laws, when people understand no one needs AK14s/15s and semi-automatic rifles and guns to ‘hunt’ or ‘protect’ one’s home, mass shootings will continue.’

Barack Obama

Yet, what was the NRA response to the Orlando horror? Well firstly, they postulated in a USA Today Op-Ed the usual, that “gun laws don’t deter terrorists”. But back in December 2012 (after Sandy Hook), the Bill to prevent even known people on the terrorism watch list from purchasing firearms was defeated (45/54). Had that Bill passed, the gunman in Orlando would most likely not have been able to purchase the fire power he used in that massacre.

And guess what? The NRA blamed Obama for this mass shooting because the killer was allowed to avoid punishment for making “threatening comments about minorities” at his job. Wow! So let’s recap: NRA is against gun control because the 2nd Amendment is sacrosanct, but the 1st Amendment is apparently irrelevant.

By the time you read this there have been numerous more mass shootings in the USA since the June 11 tragedy. Since I first wrote about guns in America in 2016, or, since Sandy Hook in 2012, 1607 mass shootings have occurred causing 1846 deaths and 6459 wounded (Vox + The Gun Violence Archives).

Australia figured it out, hell even China figured it out. America however, like Yemen, hasn’t figured it out. Maybe, instead of iPhones, etc., kids should be buying flak jackets to wear at the mall, the movies, the clubs and their schools!

Image: AK Rockefeller via StockPholio.com

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