It is a sad indictment of our society that regardless of the human tragedy that aborts our young and most vulnerable members, we stubbornly refuse to pass stringent laws banning hand guns. The blood of those that perished in the mass murder at Virginia Tech had barely dried when the NRA launched its offensive to demand that we turn our schools into shooting galleries by arming our teachers. Mindful of its loosening grip on a society disgusted and losing patience on the violence of our disaffected youth, the NRA repeats its tired mantra of the citizens ’right to bare arms’ – an obscene anachronism which needs to be vigorously challenged in the courts.
Every community has armed militias – we call them law enforcement agencies. We have rightly become the laughing stock of the world with our gun obsession. Do we need military style weapons for hunting and killing God’s animals to fulfill some grotesque Rambo fantasies? The underlying statistics regarding gun violence delivers an unmistakable and troubling message – far more deaths occur from suicides and offensive actions than lives saved by defensive measures using guns. The NRA’s twisted, circular, logic is to persuade us to buy more guns to protect ourselves from the guns that have already been sold. The Virginia Tech tragedy should be a wake-up call for stricter laws regarding gun ownership. We need our politicians to respond to our concerns not to the deep pockets of gun lobbyists.
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