CommentsTRUMP WATCH--How many ‘enough’s’ does it take before too much becomes enough?
Call your members of Congress now. Tell them no gun regulation reform, no political careers for them come November.
Congressional Switchboard: 202-224-3121
Donald Trump, who is never at a loss for insincere words mouthed awkwardly from a Teleprompter, promised America's children Thursday he would do anything for them. Anything, that is except actually take meaningful action to actually protect them from the escalating epidemic of gun massacres. Anything but even allow a discussion of the real problem … too many GUNS.
“Students who escaped the deadly school shooting in Florida focused their anger Sunday at President Donald Trump, contending that his response to the attack has been needlessly divisive.” https://tinyurl.com/yccqwevo
"You're the president. You're supposed to bring this nation together, not divide us," said David Hogg, a 17-year-old student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in South Florida, speaking on NBC's "Meet the Press."
"How dare you," he added.”
What we heard from Trump was nothing more than the kind of statement of platitude sympathy you would expect from a pastor at a funeral, in this case yet at least 17 more funerals, not the statement of a leader with the courage to respond to an existential crisis with decisive policy action.
So much for the good for nothing but a hand holder in chief. So much for the worthless sack in chief. Of course we knew all that already.
But what we are focused on today are the members of Congress who have spent their political careers running scared of a tiny sliver of extreme gun fanatics, who have no manhood that does not derive from the fire power to unleash a murderous hail of bullets on defenseless small animals and small children.
The terrified children we saw running for their lives on our TVs yesterday have more courage than any of these members of congress who sit on their hands, refusing to consider even the most basic things to protect us, universal background checks, banning military style assault weapons, ALL of them, ALL OF THEM, limits on magazines, outlawing so-called bump stocks, mandatory gun registration, etc., policy measures that the vast majority of the American people support.
The fact that no such measure can possibly eradicate all evil is not an excuse to continue to do absolutely nothing to stop it. The big lie in all this is that such measures do not work. They have worked in every country that has responded to their own carnage crisis by passing them. They were working here before they were allowed to lapse.
And what do our cowardly politicians outlaw instead? They outlaw the Centers For Disease Control (CDC) from studying the public health threat of gun violence. Yes as insanely ignorant that is, that is what the Republican Congress has done. Instead, about the first bill Trump signed from Congress last year was to make it more EASY for mentally ill people to buy guns.
Those frightened children crying out in horror in Parkland, FL, have more courage than those members of Congress offering empty prayers from their Capitol Hill office bunkers, because those children went to their school with the full knowledge that none of those politicians were doing anything to protect them from this kind of increasingly recurrent massacre.
It's gotten so bad in this country that this very school had done "red alert" drills specifically about how to respond to a bloody massacre, as it if was an inevitable peril to their lives for going to school.
We defy any rabid gun nut in the country to cite even a single instance where an assault weapon was effectively used for self defense. Name one. Name even one. The chance that anyone carrying such a weapon in public will use it to stop the NEXT massacre is negligible, compared to the chance that they will in fact be its perpetrator. It's literally never happened ever.
The fact is that there is NO defense against an assault weapon, no way to stop yet another mass murder, unless some so-called "good" guy already has a gun to the head of the shooter before he pulls his trigger the first time.
Yes, of course the mentally ill should not be getting their hands on high powered weapons, presumably some current members of Congress could even be pushed that far before we push them out of office. But far beyond that, ANYONE who thinks they need an assault weapon in a
civil society is by definition mentally ill.
It's long past time for the under siege majority in America to put an end to this, by finally putting an end to the political careers of those who stand in the way of meaningful policy change.***
- And let’s put an end to the gun non-wisdom that if everyone was armed there would be less killing.
Seriously? Would you rather send your child to a school that had a no gun policy or one where all had assault rifles, bump stocks, extended magazines…? The injured and dead would likely overwhelm the paramedics. - In the old west residents from bitter experience knew armed men meant trouble. Regardless of the public’s perception gun control laws may have actually been stricter back in the 19th and early 20th century than they are now especially in the West. https://tinyurl.com/acr5ajs
It's time for America to stop being the senseless mass murder capital of the civilized world. If there is anything that we SHOULD be angry about, this is it.
We will make it so this coming November, and so dedicate our own lives.
People With Guns Kill More Than People Without Guns!
(Michael N. Cohen is a former board member of the Reseda Neighborhood Council, founding member of the LADWP Neighborhood Council Oversight Committee, founding member of LA Clean Sweep and a contributor to CityWatch.)
