The Kids Have It Right

The kids have it right.

It’s not a “mental health” issue. It’s an access to military-style weapons issue. There should be less access, period, full stop.

Every responsible gun owner would agree with this. And the way you know for a fact that it’s true – we have a school shooting incident every 60 hours in this country. No other developed nation has anything like this going on.

Are we to believe that this is because there are no mental health issues anywhere else?

Or – and the only plausible explanation – other countries have mental issues but do not allow an 18 year old to walk into a store and buy a weapon that can fire 45 rounds per minute, with very little vetting, no training and no restriction.

I’ve been sick to my stomach thinking about this all week. The idea that because we can’t prevent all gun violence, we should not try to prevent any of it is the dumbest, most tired and dangerous argument around right now. It’s a lie that is covered in the blood of innocents. Mass shooters, who almost always tote an AR-15 or similar weapon, don’t ask you if you’re a Democrat or Republican before opening fire. And I’ll go ahead and assume that parents at both ends of the political spectrum love their children equally. So why on earth is access to military-style weapons a partisan issue?

I believe in the second amendment and the constitutional guarantee that Americans have the right to bear arms and defend themselves. But without any restriction? Should we be allowed to have rocket launchers at home? Missiles? An M1 Abrams tank? A nuclear submarine?

The NRA is not fighting for the second amendment or for responsible gun owners. The NRA is a LOBBY FOR THE GUN MANUFACTURERS and their clients want to sell high ticket-price, high margin assault weapons. So they twist the minds of Americans and corrupt the political system to conflate responsible gun ownership with a free-for-all of unchecked violence.

Kids have the right to attend school and expect some level of safety and protection from the adults whose job it is to provide that in any civil society. Parents have the right to send their kids off to school or a mall or a movie theater or a church without having to wonder, every single fucking time, whether this is the last day they’ll see them alive.

Emma Gonzales is the future of this country. She has it exactly right. When one group’s rights threaten the rights – and lives – of every other group, a reckoning is in order. If the NRA truly cared about preserving the rights of responsible gun owners, it would draw the line between the freedoms of the second amendment and absolute madness itself. It does not. This may have been the tragedy that pushed things too far. God, I hope so.