nico
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Is it even possible to pick apart all his lies in one letter?
Editor's View: How many more will die before guns are controlled?
by John Rouse
A 17-year-old Bowie girl is dead - shot to death by an assailant for some as yet unkown reason in a well-tended, tranquil park only steps away from the Free State and Marketplace malls.
Yet another of the millions of guns that scar this country like a pox has claimed a life that had barely begun. A child, for heaven's sake, shot to death in our midst. It's the 71st murder in Jack Johnson's Prince George's County since January.
This country's love affair with guns is sick, sick, sick.
I recall that a few years ago a group of gun afficonados (someone less restrained than myself might call them nuts) gathered near Pointer Ridge to shoot off a slew of weapons that included just about everything but a cannon. For all I know, they may even have had one of those, too, but hadn't unloaded it from the truck before they were told to depart the area by police. Their spent cartridges landed in neighboring residential areas, understandably scaring the hell out of the people who lived there. Shades of Baghdad.
I still remember this incident these many moons later because I was absolutely dumbfounded by the audacity of these characters. It was beyond my comprehension how anyone could be so downright oblivious to the safety of others. Such a shootout may not have happened in here since then, but it's a regular occurrence elsewhere. And let's be honest, it seems to be a near-daily feature on the streets of other areas of Prince George's County in 2005. Oh, wait a minute, I forgot that shots were fired during a recent armed holdup at the Route 197 McDonald's, and many handguns have been brandished around town pretty regularly.
The legal powers in Pee Gee County took action against those gun "hobbyists" years ago. Today, regrettably, they can rarely find the shoot-em-up idiots that are turning the county into a latter-day Dodge City. It's beyond my comprehension why the gun fanciers find it so enjoyable to go out and fire away with automatic weapons and assault rifles. I can understand, barely, that firing a pistol at a target in a shooting range might be of some interest, though a bow and arrow would be more of a challenge. What will be next, "hobbyists" tossing hand grenades?
I fired such weapons when I was in the military, and I didn't get any big charge - oops, a pun - from doing so. Fortunately, I never had to use my assault rifle to shoot another human being, despite the best efforts of my weapons officer to taunt me into using him for target practice. We were taught way back then in the musket era to kill people; that's what such weapons are made for. Trekking off to the woods to blast away at squirrels doesn't require an AK-47 or an Uzi. There is no justification for anyone other than the military - or law enforcement agencies in extraordinary situations - having these killing machines. Nor is there any reason for Joe Average to wander around carrying a pistol.
The National Rifle Association often launches pro-gun mailing efforts aimed at the media. Over the years, I've had my share of little yellow postcards, and now e-mails, trumpeting pro-gun messages. It wouldn't surprise me to one day receive a stream of such missives calling for private ownership of anti-aircraft guns. The NRA has a lot of political clout - something anti-gun lobbying groups, sadly, don't have. Our elected representatives quiver in abject fear when the NRA shakes its can of quarters and tells the gutless members of Congress to ignore the overwhelming majority of the American public that wants truly effective gun control, not Band-Aids. Let everyone in the country buy a machine gun with which to go a-huntin' in their neighborhood wooded areas. There are Bowie folks who write letters to this newspaper who would just love that, too.
The right-wing Republicans (and a handful of moderates) who now rule us in all branches of the federal government would like nothing better than to do away with the virtually ineffective gun controls now in place. Fire one for Tom DeLay and Bill Frist (a doctor, for heaven's sake). You can almost imagine many of these people bellowing, "C'mon, fellow Americans, what's wrong with assault weapons?" They're just dandy for hunting geese, if you like your bird in powder form, that is. I can't escape the nightmarish thought that one of these days Americans, or at least those wide-eyed types obsessed with guns, will be strapping six-shooters to their hips as they venture to the Giant to buy hot dogs. The weapon would be handy to keep fellow Bowieites from trying to steal your parking spot. Just shoot out their tires. Folks could step outside of local watering holes and settle an argument at 20 paces with a Colt. Republicans could shoot Democrats. The dementedly self-righteous might arm themselves with a Bible and a gun to deal with the heathens amongst us. Nah, crazy ideas, right?
There is nothing more likely to attract fiery retorts than an anti-gun column. The bullet brigade, nostrels surely flaring, will dispatch e-mails that could scorch a charcoal grill in full flame. Their right to bear arms, including, it seems, guns, rockets, tanks and maybe even missiles is guaranteed by the Constitution. Or so they like to claim. Wimps like me who disagree with them are pinko subservives and should be sent to Cuba to contemplate Fidel's beard and recite passages from the Communist Manifesto. I'm not kidding! Some of those people really think that way. It boggles the mind.
Well, I don't like seeing children shot to death. I don't like seeing anyone shot to death. Do our gun-loving friends consider this an acceptable price to pay for their racks of rifles? I lived for several years in a country - Great Britain - that bans virtually all weapons other than hunting rifles, and these are very, very tightly controlled. Even the police rarely carry handguns. I still marvel at how safe it is there. Sure, there are killings, but not on the scale we see in this country. If there's no gun handy, people think twice about offing someone. No other western nation sees as many of its citizens shot to death, outside of war, than does our own United States. Some of our cities, and even our own Prince George's County, are like war zones, thanks to the proliferation of guns. Yep, folks are using their guns to hunt, all right - each other.
When are the pols going to start listening to a large chunk of their constituents - the parents of dead children, the families of innocent people shot in the street or in their homes - and do something meaningful about gun control? How many more 17-year-olds have to die before Congress tells the NRA to go to blazes and passes effective gun control laws? Probably not in my lifetime. And the murders go on and on and on.
What a crying shame!
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Is it even possible to pick apart all his lies in one letter?
