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Showing posts with label Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. Show all posts

Friday, July 20, 2012

Enough is Enough--It's time for gun control

"Blood will have blood." --William Shakespeare, Macbeth

I grew up in a house with a gun in it. When I was younger, I went target shooting with a .22. I have fired large caliber handguns at a shooting range.  I am, in fact, a decent shot, more than good enough to pass LAPD standards.
 I am not categorically opposed to private ownership of handguns. I am not a knee-jerk liberal on the subject.I am not advocating mass confiscation of projectile weapons.
But for the love of God, we have to stop mail order gun sales, particularly of automatic rifles, and we need to close the loopholes on sales at gun shows. "Guns don't kill people," gun rights advocates are fond of saying, "people kill people." This is an argument that has been going on since 1963 when a mail-order rifle in the hands of Lee Harvey Oswald killed John F. Kennedy.  Fifty years people.
Enough.
Police in Aurora are now trying to trace the weapons used by a man to kill and wound dozens of people. (As I write this the death toll at the Dark Knight Rises screening is being variously reported as 12 and 13, with the number of wounded between 38 and 50.)  I'd be willing to bet the suspect picked up at least some of his arsenal either through mail order or from a gun show, where sales protocols are riddled with loopholes.