When will Americans get it? When will they ever learn that having easy access to guns means people are going to die needlessly? And what is it going to take for lawmakers across the 50 states to finally have the moral backbone to pass meaningful gun-control legislation.
The events at Columbine High School were not enough. The killings of innocent schoolchildren at Sandy Hook Elementary School did not do it either. The murderous sprees at a Batman premiere, in a Charleston Church, at a California McDonalds, of Pennsylvania Amish faithful, at a university in Virginia — take your pick of any of all too many incidents where gunman open fire on so many with such ease — have all failed to impact the collective American psyche that American psychos thrive where guns are readily available.
Yes, the all-power National Rifle Association lobby argues guns do not kill people. Sadly, it is right. People with guns kill people. And take the guns out of the equation and it is much harder for people to kill others.
Maybe, just maybe, the shooting on live television of a reporter and a cameraman might be enough for enough Americans to say “enough”.
Yes, the gunman committed suicide and yes he was disgruntled and had a bone to pick with the reporter, but the reality is that this event might never have escalated to an on-air tragedy and a clip that will live for notoriety and posterity in the digital world of YouTube were it not for the killer’s easy access to a weapon.
And yes, there is a right under US Constitution and its Bill of Rights that guarantees the right to bear arms. That was written when America was 13 colonies, under threat that its fledgling revolution would be snuffed out by British Redcoats and local militias of men with muskets were needed — not when any disgruntled worker with anger-management issues could amass an arsenal at the local hardware store that could hold off a regiment of those Redcoats. Maybe, just maybe things will change. Sadly, most likely they won’t.
