Please find below a link (to PBS Newshour) that lists what every US senator proposes and “plans to do” to attempt to stop gun violence in America. Although not every senator has a plan — many didn’t even respond — it is a helpful launching pad to learn more about all the various Bills and proposals already out there to address this crisis.
I am 100% with you brother. I too grew up with our dad (retired naval officer, after two tours in Vietnam) taking us out to teach us gun safety and how to shoot every summer. Although it never grabbed me as a hobby, as it did with my brother, I have always appreciated the safety they provide one’s house and family.
With that said, that puts me a bit at odds with the second amendment… Because I see owning a gun as an imperative tool for a man or woman to protect themselves and their loved ones. (I admit i would feel unsafe for my family without a gun in the home.)
And I also appreciate those who want to go to ranges and practice and become an expert at shooting as an occupation or hobby. And even those who enjoy shooting as a sport. It is an actual sport. I get it. I’m not against those things.
(Although I must admit I feel morally inclined to be against humans “hunting” animals for sport. But that’s just me. It doesn’t make me “right”. Just my subjective viewpoint.)
But that’s where it ends with me. I think we’ve gone way too far, overboard. And if we started a massive project to destroy 99% of the guns in the country as other nations have done, then maybe I wouldn’t feel such a strong need to own a gun to feel safe.
It seems to me we have allowed our capitalist and political system to take way too much advantage of “the second amendment” and the more vulnerable people among us. To the point where guns and weapons are a hugely profitable business that nobody wants to give up, and because of it we have a legal system set up now so locked up in centuries of red tape and bureaucracy geared towards “free and easy guns for any and every one” to support that profit machine that it seems almost impossible to the average person to ever solve the crisis it’s created.
So everybody utters “thoughts and prayers” and expresses their sadness and grief, and then we move on. Because most feel completely victimized and immobilized by the apparent impossibility of solving the problem. It’s not that most Americans want free and easy guns floating all over the country. But we’re all aware that the industry is so big that 50-75% of elected civil servants need to accept the money in one form or another offered them from lobbyists representing “guns” and “the sacred second amendment”. Just as they do from every other industry lobbyist.
Hence the vital need for campaign finance reform in the US. That lobbyist system, forced upon us without our consent approval or desire for it, literally breeds the corruption and deceit we witness daily in American politics by (I believe) a few otherwise potentially moral people. But in the US civil servants aren’t elected because they’re good at their job or could be. They’re elected because they raised the most money. They have no choice. They know it. We know it. Because again, we feel trapped by and see no way out of yet another system we had no part in and no choice in its establishment, nor its continuance. We are enslaved by it.
Weekly mass shootings and the proliferation of more guns than American citizens in our country is just one of the countless atrocities we are forced to endure due to a corrupt and broken system deliberately created and perpetuated by greedy soulless monsters who were here long before us and are now gone. And yet there are plenty serving today who still wish to perpetuate this insanity.
I know we are all heartbroken and in shock over yet another mass shorting. But i would urge us all to not even allow ourselves to get any relief out of feeling sad or utter “thoughts and prayers” and instead keep the anger and fire alive inside of us in order to force us to take ACTIONS.
Because the only way we are going to solve THIS is the same way we always have, like ending slavery, or getting women the right to vote, or ending horrendous wars or stopping over zealous police from needlessly murdering black people. We have to refuse now to accept this ever happening again.
And we will do just that as soon as we recognize that there are way more of us than them, as soon as we take to the streets, start boycotting, civil disobedience, advertising campaigns, marches and rallies, international cooperatives that boycott and ban any companies responsible for being a part of the gun trade directly or indirectly, heckling and harassing both online and in person and at rallies every single politician who dares to open their mouths in support of continuing this madness. If we can do it with MeToo, then we can do it with murdering people.
(See how confused and distracted they have us with talk and discussion about “the second amendment” and bills and proposals and legislation…? We’re actually discussing if it’s even possible for our elected leaders to stop “murdering people” from being a daily part of our lives!!! We’ve become indoctrinated to believe that it’s an impossible task, that years need to be invested into “investigating how to prevent it” because we love and need our guns and we “have a right to them”. It’s mass psychosis.)
We need to make the elected and non elected leaders of this country finally come to terms with the fact that as a people we are DONE with this. We are done with them.
It has to be a MISSION. A full on peoples movement that doesn’t stop until we win.
What does winning mean exactly? Well the PBS article we read today does an excellent job of spelling it out. All the action items and bills that need to become laws are right there. No investigation needed.
I hate To say it, but this needs to get to the point where if a politician or even a neighbor or a friend or family member mentions something about “not wanting gun control” or wanting to “maintain their right to buy as many guns as they want to”, THAT needs to be treated as badly and punitively as uttering a racial slur or committing a hate crime or sexual abuse or any of the other things we have deemed as a society are no longer appropriate, desired or permitted in civil society. The time for patience and discussion is over.
We would never allow someone in todays world to say “faggot” or the N word. But we still let people waffle on gun control laws? Background checks? Licensing? All the while knowing that another mass shooting is around the corner because of this stalling tactic? All in the name of needing more time to debate or investigate.. or respect those who “want their rights”? Because it’s “in the constitution”..? That’s the same thing they said about slavery. Or about Native Americans. Or about women. The constitution was filled with downright barbarous monstrous things. And we endured that sh*t for hundreds of years. Those days are over now for the legal gun running disguised as “business” that causes the endless shameful parade of mass shootings we are forced to endure every week in the US.
We need to make examples of every single person who still doesn’t get it. Immediately. In the moment. Just as we did in support of our LGBTQ friends. At some point we decided to stop debating and pandering and enduring, realizing those on the other side were either too old or too dumb or too heartless to get it and they never would. So we took action. We need to do that again now. Be sad, sure. But GET MAD. And stay mad. And let’s end this once and for all.
- https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/what-action-should-be-taken-on-guns-we-asked-every-senator
