“Guns don’t kill people, people kill people” has been the credo of NRA, gun lobby and most Republicans since the 1980s when gun manufacturers came up with automatic pistols, so that guns could kill more people.
But Las Vegas shooter Stephan Paddock had no discernible mental illness, criminal record — or anger problems, according to his brothers. The NRA will try in vain to find a reason this inhuman act was committed when there is no reason, other than the fact that military-style weapons are legal in most of America and easily obtainable.
Only guns can kill that many people — including women and children. His brothers didn’t even know he was a gun nut who owned more than 30 weapons, and was able to smuggle in 10 suitcases containing 23 of those weapons without any Mandalay Bay staff even noticing such an oddity. Who needs that many suitcases in a hotel room?
The odds are that nothing will be done about this massacre, as long as President Trump and Republicans are in power. President Trump called it an act of evil, yet he won’t look at the evil in his own soul; the countless times he has lied and cheated to build his real estate empire that have been documented in many of the 3,500 lawsuits he has been involved in.
Australia had a similar gun problem until 36 people were killed in Port Arthur, and Prime Minister John Howard was able to pass strict gun control laws in 1996, the same year of the Port Arthur massacre. There hasn’t been a mass killing since then in Australia.
Australians apparently don’t believe owning an assault rifle is the ticket to manhood. Their gun control laws are maintained by weapon buyback programs and the requirement that gun owners must belong to a certified gun club.
How did our gun laws become so lax that military-style weapons are this easy to obtain? It was a little known Supreme Court decision authored by its most extreme ideologue, Justice Antonin Scalia, in the 1980s which said that said gun owners no longer must heed the constitutional Second Amendment stricture that gun owners must be members of a well-regulated militia in order to bear arms.
Our founding fathers must have thought it would help to curb the random gun violence we have today.
Harlan Green © 2017
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