“Unknown Author” NAILS Much Needed Sensible Gun Control
On May 14, 2022 18-year-old Payton Gendron drove 200 miles to kill 10 people in a grocery store in Buffalo NY. Ten days later, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos entered an elementary school in Uvaldi, TX and murdered students and two teachers. Both teens used assault weapons that were legally sold to them. In between these two horrific incidents, four people were killed and 23 were injured in five other US mass shootings: two in Texas, two in North Carolina and one in California.
So here’s an idea. I cannot take credit for it. I found it on Facebook, posted by Nev Shulman, host and producer of MTV’s Catfish. The author is “unknown” and I took the liberty to make some minor edits, but the basic concept is simply BRILLIANT!
The “unknown” author has a unique suggestion that “we treat every young man wanting to buy a gun like every young woman who wants to get an abortion”:
- 48-hour waiting period
- Parental permission
- A note from his doctor proving he understands the full ramifications of what he’s about to do
- Made to watch video graphically depicting gun violence victims and grieving parents
“Close down all but one gun shop in each state making such young men have to ravel hundreds of miles, take time off work, and stay overhigh tin a strange town to get a gun.
“Make him walk through a gauntlet of people holding photos of loved ones who were shot to death” shouting at him, calling him a murderer and begging him not to buy a gun.
Unknown adds “that it makes far more sense to require this of men wanting guns than women seeking health care” because no abortion ever killed mass numbers — double digits -of people in minutes, nor could it.
Unknown’s suggestion may sound lighthearted but it makes total sense, especially the waiting period which should be longer that 48 hours in order to check criminal and mental health backgrounds — after all, far more lives are at stake.
You cannot just buy or rent a car. Driving a car requires acquisition of learner’s permit and passing written and road test. But gun ownership is a “right” you say, secured by the 2nd amendment? No. Personal gun ownership is not a right. And there is certainly not a right to own assault weapons. The second amendment specifies:
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
This has absolutely nothing to do with individual shooters’ alleged “right” to buy guns. Shooting school kids has nothing to do with securing a free state. Yet states have expanded on this non-existent right with carry and concealed carry laws as well as “stand your ground” laws.
Because unknown author’s metaphor compared gun violence to abortion, we must ask where are the anti-abortionists in regard to gun violence? Why are they not protesting at every gun store and demanding laws similar to those suggested herein.
Many have long questioned the authenticity of the motivation of anti-abortionists when it comes to their lack of concern about living human children. Catholic nun Joan Chittister, for instance, has stated:
“I do not believe that just because you are opposed to abortion, that that makes you pro-life. In fact, I think in many cases, your morality is deeply lacking if all you want is a child born but not a child fed, a child educated, a child housed. And why would I think that you don’t? Because you don’t want any tax money to go there. That’s not pro-life. That’s pro-birth. We need a much broader conversation on what the morality of pro-life is.”
If anti-abortionists really cared about life, they would be leading safe gun laws such as waiting periods, background checks, banning military assault weapons — automatic and semiautomatic. They would fight to ban large capacity ammo magazines. Do not the lives of 8–10 year-olds matter?
How dare anyone fight to force women to bring an unwanted pregnancy to term, while not working to stop the insanity of loved and cared for children drying of gun violence without lobbying to for sensible gun safety laws such as banning assault weapons?
Perhaps it’s because anti-abortionists are anti-woman and abortion blames women. We are wont to stop blaming female genitalia and estrogen for societal ills and put the blame instead where it belongs: Testosterone and a man with a hardon. Girls and women are temptresses, whores and witches. While boys will be — WHITE boys and men — will be boys.
Anti-abortionists and the public conveniently ignore men’s role and responsibility in conceptions that lead to abortion, including that which is incestuous, pedophilic, abusive, adulterous, or totally inappropriate because of power imbalances, or out and out felonious.
Where is any effort to hold men responsible for abortions when many of them are financing abortions for their wives, mistresses, girlfriends or casual dates? If women and abortion providers are to be criminalized where is any effort encouraging women to reveal who is paying for their abortions and criminalize the impregnators, which might have a profound impact on reducing the number of abortions?
But the Evangelicals at the center of the anti-abortion frenzy believe that women — and their offspring — are property of and answerable to their fathers and husbands.
We as a nation either love and care about the health and safety of our children or we don’t. Let’s stop the phony posturing not wanting to stop a beating heart while our children are being slaughtered in their schools, on playgrounds and even in the safety of their own homes by stray bullets. Our children are our future. Stop praying and lamenting after the fact and start enacting sane, sensible laws to protect us all from men who are so afraid of being “replaced” or whatever, they think they need to carry loaded weapons and use them. 97% of the population favors more gun control.
We need to demand our elected officials do the will of the people or vote them out!
