Defying the NRA Death Lobby
Half a century ago 60 percent of Americans favored a ban on hand guns. Now, 53 percent don’t want to outlaw even assault rifles.
Such a massive shift in public opinion has been spurred, sponsored and legislatively enforced by the National Rifle Association, tagged by journalists as the gun lobby but more accurately described as the gun death lobby.
As Mitt Romney disdains new firearm restrictions in favor of “changing the heart of the American people” and Democrats, including the President, shy away from gun control, advocates point out that the NRA may be a “paper tiger” in elections yet terrorizes Congress with its rating system.
“We do absolutely everything they ask,” says a Democratic staffer,
The few vocal politicians who resist include New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who is too rich to cower, and Rep. Carolyn Maloney, whose husband was gunned down on a commuter train. Elsewhere, even after shocks such as Aurora, there is silence on Capitol Hill.
Yet, isn’t an election year the time for voters to push Congressional candidates on the issue?
Shouldn’t both presidential candidates be under pressure to move toward some semblance of gun control?
Shouldn’t the silent majority that abhors random violence be pushing back against an organization that last year arrogantly refused to even discuss the issue with the White House?
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I know gun owners, owners of handguns and hunting rifles and shotguns. They don’t want their right (note I did not say privilege) to own such weapons to be encroached upon or taken away. I feel and agree with them.
That said, I believe that the laws on the books cover a plethora of penalties and consequences for misusing such weapons and simply need to be enforced, and that where a weapon is used to commit a crime NO PLEA BARGAN should be allowed but only the full weight and penalty of law applied with full time served!
All that said, I also believe that just like the Founding Fathers would not have agreed with armed lay citizens possessing cannons on their front lawns for defense of their homes, they would also probably not agree with assault weapons, solely intended for massive kill weapons of war, to be in the hands of the lay citizens.
Unless called up as part of a militia, no law abiding gun owning citizen needs or should be in possession of an assault weapon, since it does not take such a weapon to defend one’s home/property or self. My personnel protection shotgun is deadly at close range, such as in a home or in close quarters on a property, and it’ll do one helluva job for defense comparable to that of an assault weapon, only more safely and sanely.
While I am an ardent supporter of the NRA, I am not a stupid supporter of that organization.
I agree with and support the underlying premise upon which this organization stands for, however, I don’t not agree with their hellter skelter view and approach to totally ‘de-regulation’ style firearms laws.
We all now know all too sadly the consequences of across-the-board de-regulatory policies, evidenced by the Crash of 2008. We don’t need a Crash of Firearms De-Regulation because the body politic gave into the fanatical elements of the NRA, just like the Republican party has given into the fanatical elements of the Tea Party.
Polarizing, crazy, wing-nut fanatical anti-gun control hysteria is as bad as the same kind of pro-gun control hysteria, of which neither serves the intended Constitutional guarantees intended by the Founding Fathers of America.