If 59 people died and 500+ were injured in a fire at Mandalay Bay, we would be having a discussion about how to increase fire safety so that this would never happen again. If 59 people died and 500+ were sickened by food poisoning at a concert venue, we would be having a discussion on how to increase food safety. If a tanker truck crashed on I-15 in Las Vegas and 59 people died and 500+ were injured we would be having a discussion on how to increase highway safety so that it would never happen again. It isn't "political" to ask how we can increase gun safety so that this doesn't happen again. Why can we not have that discussion?
Is the NRA and gun lobby groups so much more powerful than our congressmen and women? Are our representatives so corrupt across the board now that money and power and re-election all they care about? Our second amendment rights will not be taken away if we just use some common sense, and I don't understand why legal gun owners wouldn't jump at the chance to make things easier to keep guns from certain persons. We don't allow anyone to own and drive a vehicle, yet no-one complains about having to have a license to operate one, pass a competency test, insure it against accidents, and operate it in a responsible manner. So why are legal gun owners so afraid of some common sense gun control measures? Why does anyone need an assault weapon for home protection? A shotgun works just as well, and makes a lot more noise.
My father was a gunsmith, gun dealer and a lifetime member of the NRA. I'm glad he's not alive to see what that organization has turned into. To my knowledge, Dad did not own a handgun. He said there was only one reason for that and that was to kill another person. Long guns were used for hunting and sport shooting. He was a master trap shooter, as was, and is, is youngest brother. I asked Mom once what they told us as kids to keep us from bothering with Dads guns. She said they told us nothing, we knew they were his and we were not to touch them without his permission or presence. They were not locked up, they were not stored loaded. We knew where the ammo was kept and if there wasn't enough, we knew how to load shells. Yet we never touched it without Dad's permission.
When my son was small, his dad's guns were hung on an open rack above his bed, yet he never touched them. We also did not tell him not to do it, they were not his to touch. That's one thing that bothers me so much when I hear of a child killing a sibling or themselves with a loaded handgun that was kept for protection. Why was the gun where it could be reached by a child?
Isn't it about time we have some kind of discussion about the types of guns citizens need? Only law enforcement and military need assault rifles. The adapters for the stocks that this man legally purchased effectively made his weapons automatic continuous fire. Why does any normal citizen need these? He passed all of the background checks when he legally purchased the weapons, yet the gun dealer, a legitimate dealer who followed all the rules, was not able to tell that somewhere in this man, was a monster planning a massacre.
There will not be any easy answers, but the conversation must start somewhere before we are mourning the deaths of many more innocent people, who just wanted to enjoy a concert.
Those are my thoughts and I don't have any answers, but maybe someone somewhere will read this and think that there is something that can be done.
