This touches on perhaps the biggest problem with the NRA and the politics of gun fun. It is not only the Tiahrt Amendment which is attached to any and all gun legislation, but a litany of other similar laws. All of them sponsored by the NRA owned Republican Party and a few Democrats. These onerous laws make it illegal to gather data on gun ownership, gun crimes, gun use, gun deaths, guns and health and anything that allows decent Americans to know the facts surrounding the addiction to guns. For if every voter in America knew the facts, if the CDC, hospitals, doctors, the ATF and state and local police were allowed to put such information into a database that we could access publicly, gun control laws would have a chance. But the gun enthusiasts will not have that. It is much like denying evolution or global warming, information and facts are their enemy.
A new book by Dan Baum, GUN GUYS – A ROAD TRIP explains one of the issues I have been trying to get across to anyone who will listen for most of my life. Though the book has a foot in each camp, it is mostly about the author’s experience talking and working with gun enthusiasts around the country. Both sides are angry with him.
First we must define “gun enthusiasts.” The 300 million guns in America are owned by only 40% of Americans. Of that 40% the majority are hunters, collectors, those who have had the guns bequeathed down the years and some with a gun for home protection. Even the NRA 4 million members are not all nutcases. That leaves at the most 15% of us who are “gun enthusiasts.” Why are we allowing a small group of violent paranoid Right-wing addicts to write our gun laws? Mostly because Republicans and some Democrats are afraid of them. In elections where only half the people vote, 15% who absolutely will vote one issue can make or break an election.
As the author of GUN GUYS so eloquently explains, these “gun guys” wake up in the morning thinking about their AR15, spend all day thinking about it, go to bed at night thinking AR15, dream about it and will never miss a vote for an AR15. It’s their main event in life. It is above all else who the are. IT IS AN ADDICTION.
And again and again. As a parent, I want to know where these people live. I do not want my children getting anywhere near them, their property or God forbid inside their homes which contain guns on an average counting in the double digits. Come on… These are addicted Right-wingers whose only issue other than guns are immigrants and that Goddamn NWORD in the White House. What in the Hell do you think all their guns are for? Gosh… I am just so sick of these a wholes, almost 2 million dead Americans since WW2 from gun fun.