End The Gun Epidemic in America

When I established Troutbirder blog many years ago, I vowed to keep it upbeat and noncontentious by avoiding political and religious "debates." Talk radio kind of "discussion" usually makes me sick. So it was with some foreboding, when I read several of my favorite nonpolitical  blogs recently to find that they had  broken that same self imposed line. And then I was shamed.  Midlife Roadtrippers recent post on guns comes to mind. Here is a link to her post.  http://midlifejobhunter.blogspot.com/2015/12/compass-lost-finding-solution-to-our.html
Her words touched me to the core yet I knew my own outrage over these never ending  murders would leave me inarticulate at best and sounding like the wingnuts who swarm the media and the moneyed interests in Congress.

From  The New York Times whose motto remains "All The News That Fit To Print."

 

"It is a moral outrage and a national disgrace that civilians can legally purchase weapons designed specifically to kill people with brutal speed and efficiency. These are weapons of war, barely modified and deliberately marketed as tools of macho vigilantism and even insurrection. America’s elected leaders offer prayers for gun victims and then, callously and without fear of consequence, reject the most basic restrictions on weapons of mass killing, as they did on Thursday. They distract us with arguments about the word terrorism. Let’s be clear: These spree killings are all, in their own ways, acts of terrorism.

Opponents of gun control are saying, as they do after every killing, that no law can unfailingly forestall a specific criminal. That is true. They are talking, many with sincerity, about the constitutional challenges to effective gun regulation. Those challenges exist. They point out that determined killers obtained weapons illegally in places like France, England and Norway that have strict gun laws. Yes, they did.

But at least those countries are trying. The United States is not. Worse, politicians abet would-be killers by creating gun markets for them, and voters allow those politicians to keep their jobs. It is past time to stop talking about halting the spread of firearms, and instead to reduce their number drastically — eliminating some large categories of weapons and ammunition.

It is not necessary to debate the peculiar wording of the Second Amendment. No right is unlimited and immune from reasonable regulation.

Certain kinds of weapons, like the slightly modified combat rifles used in California, and certain kinds of ammunition, must be outlawed for civilian ownership. It is possible to define those guns in a clear and effective way and, yes, it would require Americans who own those kinds of weapons to give them up for the good of their fellow citizens.

What better time than during a presidential election to show, at long last, that our nation has retained its sense of decency?"
Yes, I hunted for sixty years waterfowl and upland game. I like a challenge and took  up bow hunting for deer for a few years. The deer won that one. My sons followed in my footsteps and we had a great time. It was a bad knee and falling that finally ended it for me.

 Let's begin with something simple and common sense. Military style assault rifles  should only be in the hands of our military forces.