-
Less Than One Week After Mass Shooting At Planned Parenthood Clinic, 14 More Gunned To Death In America
A Brief Comment from Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper
It’s December 2nd, 2015 – less than a week after a gun-wielding wacko blew away three people at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado – and here we already have another mass shooting in America.
On CNN and the other U.S. cable channels, there are the obligatory ‘BREAKING NEWS’ banners at the bottom of screens lit up with now all-to-familiar live footage of heavily armed police surrounding a building and people being wheeled out on stretchers among onlookers with hands partly cupped over shocked expressions on their faces – this time in San Bernardino California, at a government operated regional facility for assisting people with developmental disabilities.
According to early reports, at least 14 people were shot dead and a similar number were wounded by two or more shooters who police cruisers closed in on and gunned down as they attempted to race away from the scene in an SUV.
Through all the coverage of this – and the coverage is getting better and better, isn’t it? … Almost like another Terminator sequel – you have the same old narrations from people rubber necking around the killing scene about how “shocking” it is and how hard it all is to comprehend.
A book cover for one of the characters vying for the Republican Party nomination to run for president. This guy prides himself in being a good, God-fearing evangelical Christian and yet remains an ardent opponent of controlling the sale of guns to screwballs, even in the midst of all the gun-related carnage.
Really? What is so shocking and what is there left to comprehend? You’ve got more guns than people in the country and they are being used to blow away an average of 80 people each and every day – over and over and over again while the National Rifle Association lobbyists that run your government keep telling you how much safer you would be if every man, woman and young person over the age of 16 went to work and play packing a pistol.
It was just five days before this carnage at this California social service centre that U.S. President responded to the shooting at the Planned Parenthood clinic by saying that “this isn’t normal. … We can’t let it become normal.”
As I was sorry to comment at the time the president said that – and I was sorry because I have many close friends and relatives in the United States that I worry about every time these mass shootings happen – these senseless blood baths have become normal in America and will continue to be as long as there are not enough politicians in the country with the courage to stand up against the gun lobbyists and the stupidity out there that supports them.
By the way we are just days away from December 8th and the 35th anniversary of former Beatle John Lennon being gunned to death by a twisted young man who had no problem purchasing guns on his way to the murder site in New York City following a zig-zag journey from home in Hawaii where there were records of him receiving treatment in a hospital for mental illness.
How sad that all these years and hundreds of thousands of gun deaths later, virtually nothing has changed.
You can read another recent commentary I did on this issue by clicking on –
https://niagaraatlarge.com/2015/11/30/americans-keep-shooting-each-other-and-its-getting-boring/ .
Visit Niagara At Large at www.niagaraatlarge.com for more news and commentary for and from the greater bi-national Niagara region.
(NOW IT IS YOUR TURN. Niagara At Large encourages you to share your views on this post. A reminder that we only post comments by individuals who share their first and last name with them.)
Niagara At Large 
Sure, blame it all on mental illness. OF COURSE people who go on shooting rampages have a few screws loose BUT the US is not the only nation in the world with mental illness so that crap just doesn’t wash! There are three possible solutions:
#1 – Gun control. There will always be loopholes and gun shows where people can bypass the checks and of course there are always ways criminals can get illicit guns but I heard these mass shooters always acquire their weapons legally except for gang related killings. In other words, gun control IS a must.
#2 – Assault weapons are meant for the military. NOBODY needs a weapon that can fire off 100 rounds a minute. When are shooters overcome? When they have to reload. If they have a single shot or limited shot weapon, they can be taken down. There is a good You Tube video that illustrates the current ridiculous interpretation of the right to bear guns. A man goes into his workplace with a musket. He can’t hit the broad side of a barn with such a weapon. By the time he reloads, everyone has left the building. Besides, the US already has a militia. It’s called the armed forces. You guys aren’t fighting the natives or the British any more!
#3 – If mental illness is such a problem, how about instituting universal health care like the rest of the civilized world? The money is certainly there to do so. The will is not. There is too much money to be made from the suffering of the sick.
Boohoo, the NRA is afraid the government will control their lives. So what? The military/industrial complex and multinational corporations already do. They’re just to dumb to realize it.
I wonder how quickly gun laws would be revised if a few mass shooters rose up and went after the administrators of the NRA, the Senators and Representatives paid off by the NRA and the CEO’s of gun manufacturers. The innocents are always the victims.
LikeLike