And we call America a civilized nation and society? It is absolutely incomprehensible that this nation has descended to such a low point that its government and society cannot make a distinction between firearms used in protecting one's home and family, and murderous assault weapons that slaughter innocent people in a matter of seconds.
Yet again, the nation has been shocked by the slaughter of innocent people; this time the killing of 12 people and the wounding of 58 others in the town of Aurora, Colorado, the worst mass shooting in U.S. history. That has been hot news for a week or so, during which the American people were in a state of shock and disbelief but, as usual, it didn't take long for everything to quiet down and return to a state of normality. Our grief has a very short life span.
We need to talk about who should bear the responsibility for this travesty of morality. Who are those in America that are letting these things happen time and again, and never, ever taking the obvious steps needed to address and remedy this horrific problem that plagues our society?
Well, it's a Congress that refused to renew the Federal Assault Weapons Ban that expired in 2004. This is a Congress that has steadfastly refused to create logical and reasonable federal laws that would allow citizens to legally possess firearms in their homes for protection but would ban other weapons with firepower that only the military should possess.
It's a series of U.S. presidents who have, generally for political reasons and a lack of courage and conviction, failed to demand that such laws be enacted; they have failed to rally the support of the people to add pressure to the cause. President Obama fits this category perfectly as he had done virtually nothing on this important issue; recent reports indicate that he is not going to do anything about more effective gun controls even after this latest catastrophic event, an obvious politically motivated strategy.
It's the people of America, every last one of us, who should be morally outraged over this continuing succession of mass murders that have included the Columbine high school massacre, the murders of students at Virginia Tech, those at Northern Illinois University and others. It's the people of this nation, at least 50% of them, who either oppose any restrictions on any kind on weapons ownership, or who feel that the ones in place are sufficient; the ones who can watch videos of these atrocities and not budge an inch in their defense of the right to own these hideous weapons no matter what damage they do to our society. Their position is more than reprehensible.
It's the useless, disgusting national mainstream media that feasts upon these bloody acts of violence and does virtually nothing to raise this issue as one of this society's gravest problems; a media that has the time and the resources to conduct meaningful, substantive discussions and debates over the need for reasonable gun controls and the growing necessity to ban the most deadly of them that no one in this society has any right to use for any justifiable purpose.
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