Editor:
When will we ever learn? Why do we always insist on protecting those who wish to buy mass killing machines and also insist in protecting the grossly irresponsible manufacturers of these killing machines and not care so much about protecting our innocent children in schools, or our people in churches, or our people in concerts? Why must we Americans feel that we are now always living our lives in a world of fear, a world of chance, a world of being involved involuntarily in a game of Russian roulette?Whatever became of the pursuit-of-happiness clause in the Declaration of Independence? How can we be happy if we are constantly looking over our shoulder in fear of a madman with an AR-15 bearing down on us, or feel completely at ease worrying that our kids are safe at school?
What have we allowed our country to become? How can the Second Amendment, the right to bear arms, the amendment that has been completely bastardized by the NRA and its benefactors, weapons manufacturers, be more important in this country than a child’s right to be able to go to school without the fear that he or she might be mowed down by an AR-15?
Why should our schools become armed fortresses with armed teachers who are more concerned about the safety of themselves and their children than doing their job of teaching?
Why must the profit motive always trump human life? Why must the dollar always be cherished more than human life?
Why must this nation be the only one in the civilized world that routinely goes through these horrible nightmares of gun violence?
Throughout our history in this country we have had four presidents assassinated by firearms, and there have been 16 other attempts.
This ongoing fevered gun debate in my lifetime first flared up after John F. Kennedy’s assassination more than 54 years ago. The language and arguments are so jarringly similar. Even one of the names is eerily the same. In JFK’s assassination in Dallas the name Parkland was prominent and also in Florida last month.
Remember, Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas was where President Kennedy’s mortally wounded body was taken after being shot by the wacko Lee Oswald using a cheap mail-order rifle. Today we have that same name, Parkland, being splashed about in our headlines as the scene of a national tragedy.
Again I ask: Why must the gun manufacturers’ bottom line always be more important to politicians than children’s lives? How can these folks on the right pretend to be so concerned and so pious about fetuses and call themselves the pro-life party, but yet at the same time they hypocritically turn a blind eye to the carnage that is affecting our nation’s children in our schools?
I also find it very interesting and ironic to be