Guns Don’t Kill: Bullets Do!
By Tommy Acosta
(January 12, 2013)
Let’s talk about guns.
For those who grew up in the Bronx, other high-crime areas or states like Arizona, guns are no big deal, legal or not. You just got to assume everyone else is packing heat and that’s just the way it is.
Be careful who you mess with. Be alert at all times. You understand there is no way anyone can stop anyone from getting a gun if they want it. If the bad guys can illegally get guns anytime they want to then the good guys should have the ability to do it legally. Might as well all be on a level playing field.
But for those whose proximity to guns is limited to what they see on movies and TV, they only have what they are told in the media to help them decide whether to arm themselves or stop others from doing so.
Slowly, for these people, awareness is growing.
Guns are real. Guns are here. Guns are everywhere.
We are now being told that in the wake of the latest shooting massacres our government is taking strong and bold actions to deal with the menace of an armed-to-the-teeth population.
The input of fear into the minds and hearts of the American people continues full-force with no abatement in sight.
Images of assault rifles, bullets, pistols, kids running in terror, parents crying and talking heads expounding cram the public consciousness.
TV hosts like CNN’s Piers Morgan relentlessly pound away each night at the Second Amendment and those who dare defend it.
There is a full-scale onslaught on the rights of Americans to bear arms and there is much chest pounding by those set to disarm the country as well as by those who seek to defend it. The great debate is on!
Should the right of Americans to bear arms and defend their homes and families be taken?
Should the country be disarmed and solely depend on the government and armed authorities to protect them?
Or should every red-blooded American that believes in the Constitution and Second Amendment rise in anger against those that would set the stage for an end to the America that the Founding Fathers envisioned?
To the untrained eye, it appears the gun industry, especially those that make assault weapons are on the ropes, taking a vicious beating and any second will cave in to a united Congress and determined President.
Then there is reality.
Does anyone that understands the currents of politics and the power of big money believe that there is the slightest chance that the President or Congress will do anything more than squawk, shuffle papers and wait for the storm to blow over and a more manageable crisis to deal with to arise?
Guns are big business. Ammunition is even a bigger business. Like the cameras of old where the real money was in the film, the big money in the arms industry is in the ammunition.
Think about how many rounds a couple of guys out in the woods can fire at a target in a few minutes. We are talking hundreds, maybe thousands of bullets being used in a single afternoon of target practice. Picture tens of thousands of Americans plugging away at firing ranges every day and night, and the magnitude of the amount of bullets fired annually in this country becomes graspable.
Those bullets have to be replaced. This is where the bucks are made. From the metals industry, ammunition industry, packaging industries down to the shipping industries, everyone gets a little piece of arms pie every time a trigger is pulled.
Consider how many tons of copper and brass the metals industry sells each year to manufacturers of guns and bullets. How many Americans are employed by the industry? How much tax does the government collect from the industry?
What would happen to the profit margins of the aforementioned industries should their business be so impacted by a comprehensive ban, especially against weapons that use up lots of bullets real fast?
Banning guns like assault rifles is a hit the industry just can’t afford to take.
As far as the resolution of our elected officials to take out guns, take a good look at the Congress. How many members have united to take a stand against guns and the Second Amendment?
Or how about outraged citizens marching en-masse through the streets of Washington demanding an end to guns? Not!
You will notice barely more than little whimpers here and there from Congress or the people. Only in the media is the outrage visible
Fat contributions to our elected officials by gun-industry-associated-political groups ensure nothing more than a “for-show” response will come from those they help elect. Not that this is wrong or right. It’s just the way it is.
The President? The Vice President? They don’t have the testicular fortitude or power to cripple the industry, yet.
On both sides of the isle Congress will unite against any measures with a real bite that would hurt their benefactors. Obama and Biden don’t need the embarrassment of losing on this one. They don’t need a pissed off Congress to deal with on future bills and issues. Worse, they don’t need millions of angry and revitalized Republicans messing up their mid-term election plans.
At best, or worse depending on how one looks at this, the administration will call for Congress to act forcefully to make it more “difficult” for Americans to get assault weapons.
They will call for a special task force to study ending gun violence and come up with recommendations.
They might consider more funding for psychological research on what triggers such acts in young minds as long as the studies steer away from the impact Ritalin, Adderall and Zoloft have on kids, violent and suicidal tendencies.
We might see recommendations by the government that Hollywood tone down violent films and that video-game companies that make the games where zonked-out kids spend hours in vicarious murder sprees, stop making them.
But that’s about it. There will be no executive order banning guns. Congress will not go into emergency session to repeal the Second Amendment.
Gun and freedom advocates can breathe easier for now.
It’s the future they need to stay firmly focused on.
The assault in the airwaves against guns will ease up after the President and Congress come up with their benign solutions.
But the stink of the mass shootings will linger. Fear will continue to bubble. Those that believe guns must be banned will continue to lobby to achieve their goals. There will be more mass shootings as more young Americans become unhinged by medications.
Piers Morgan will never give up his goal to disarm America. There will be discussion after discussion by “experts” proclaiming the Second Amendment is passé and obsolete in today’s new world.
The country will remain bitterly divided on the issue. Those that believe in the ability of the government to protect them will become even more strident in getting rid of guns.
Those with little confidence in authority will continue to arm themselves in ever-growing numbers.
As the fury and fear grow there will be a national run on fire arms and ammo.
The arms industry and other associated industries will flourish and grow even fatter with more money to help elect amenable members to congress.
But there will be a tipping point. Global disarmament looms. The arms industry will be satiated and paid off. A deal will be made between them and the government that will ensure profits. The Second Amendment will fall. But not for a few more years. The results of the mid-term election will give us a clue as to when.
What we are seeing now is but a skirmish, with those seeking to end the Second Amendment testing the waters to see how strong they have gotten and the vulnerabilities of the Second amendment advocates.
The war has just begun.
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5 Comments
Yes, the battle has begun, however it began with the end of the civil war in 1866.
The whites were afraid the emancipated blacks would arm them in reprisal for being enslaved. However, this didn’t happen. Everyone knew that if one was armed, it was a deterrent for violence and provided self protection. Who were the ones afraid of reprisal? White males, who were the in fact, the government. Disarm your enemies and you’re safe.
Sound familiar? That is precisely why the 2nd Amendment was ratified. So the people would be guaranteed a free state. It had nothing to do with duck hunting.
The 2nd Amendment reads in part:
“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.”
If the citizenry is armed we will have a level playing field. Have we had that for the past 150 years? Gradual chipping away at the 2nd Amendment equals infringement. Take away our arms and we are defenseless against the government. And now we have a government that has granted itself the right to arrest anyone, anytime, for reason or not, and be locked away for an undetermined time, with no right for trial. The 2nd Amendment was created expressly to insure the people would have the security of a free state. Are some of the newly passed draconian laws aimed at securing a free state? Oh Lord, please protect me from the government that wants to protect me.
What about the recent incidents in which some nut went off and killed innocents? Sane people don’t do these unspeakable acts.
As our mental health institutions have been steadily closed over the years, those needing help and who would commit these crimes are drugged and sent back on the streets, untreated and even self-admittedly dangerous.
The National Rifle Association knows the connection between mental health and those who are inclined to use arms to satisfy their mental deficiencies. This is so blatant and yet so self serving that one wonders what kind of legislators are sitting in Congress? The new Obama Care Bill has a nugget buried in it. The new provision is only five lines long and it bans physicians from being able to document their patients’ responses to questions about guns.
The people who stand to gain the most are preventing meaningful research and documentation into preventing the cause of these recent violent outbursts.
So you want to disarm an entire nation because a few mentally unbalanced people need help? Are we the crazy ones?
Oh my gosh! What kind of ancient dream state are we living in?
The editor says,
“The 2nd Amendment was created expressly to insure the people would have the security of a free state. Are some of the newly passed draconian laws aimed at securing a free state? Oh Lord, please protect me from the government that wants to protect me.”
Can any rational person believe that the arming of every citizen with “pea-shooters” …even if every one of us had Bushmasters with 50 cartridge magazines and stockpiles of 1,000 rounds, stand a snowball’s chance in hell against the U.S. military?
Where are my drones? My heat-seeking missiles? My Armored Personnel Carriers? My F-35’s with Tomahawk Missiles, and my C-130 gunships? If the gov’mint is cummin’ after me, I need a lot of that stuff too!
C’mon, people! The 2nd Amendment (adopted on December 15, 1791) was a means of protecting oneself against a new, barely legitimate government in 1791, when a militia with muskets could take on the entire U.S. Regular Army.
Wikipedia says,
“On June 3, 1784, the day after the Continental Army was reduced to 80 men, the Congress established a regiment which was to be raised and officered by obtaining volunteers from the militia of four of the states.[10] This unit, the First American Regiment was commanded until 1 January 1792 by Josiah Harmar of Pennsylvania, gradually turned into a Regular regiment known as the 1st Infantry in 1791.”
Methinks the world has slightly changed. Perhaps it is time to consider a Constitutional Convention and bring our broken political system into something that can reflect the modern world, and last for the next 250 years.
Please come up with a better argument than protecting ourselves against a tyrannical gov’mint!
Ernie
“The war has just begun,” writes Tommy Asosta.
My parents and my grandparents are no longer living, but they knew it would be our generation, those living today that would bare the brunt of more than 3 generations of perpetual blindness. The war has not just begun and those of us who have remained active in the trenches know all about Piers Morgan and his “red-coat” tactic’s.
In the 1990’s, our nation began passing Breed Ban Legislation (BSL) against Pit Bulls that quickly grew to cover 75 known breeds of dogs, a canine genocide that includes the Boston Terrier and the Labrador Retriever. It is now 2013 and there are still plenty of people that don’t know about BSL or sustainable development (Agenda 21) for that matter. Before B. F. Skinner (operant conditioning techniques) swept the country; Pit Bull attacks were practically non-existent, go figure.
Around 5 million people are bitten by dogs each year.
885,000 dog bites require medical attention.
31,000 people underwent reconstructive surgery from 1979 to 1996.
334 (mostly children) were killed by dogs.
State Farm Insurance paid 109 million dollars on 3,800 claims in 2010, costing billions.
The number of dog bites has risen .37% nation wide, with an increase of only .2% in dog ownership.
138 children were shot unintentionally in 1996 with death ranking the highest in males ages 15 to 19.
In 2000; 1,242 intentional firearm related injuries were reported. Homicides of children are most often murders of teens by other teens.
Mans best friend, the estimated 78.2 million owned dogs of our nation do more harm to children than the estimated 270 million guns owned by gun owners.
The stink of banning dogs still lingers; like school shootings. Global dog banning still looms just like global disarmament.
Perhaps you may think that I have been comparing apples to oranges here, but that does not hide the fact that the media led us right into targeting “breed instead of deed.”
Guns don’t always kill and neither do bullets.
If I understand the author, he is asserting that the economic interests of the “gun industry” is a/the major force behind inaction related to gun violence/safety/control/freedom/etc., etc. He makes powerful and logical arguments that I believe have merit.
He also repeats in several portions of the article what amounts to a statement that a vast conspiracy exists that has as its objective the elimination of the second amendment and the disarmament of the American populace. This fear based statement/belief has little basis in reality. However, for those that have such a belief, it IS their reality.
As long as those with a “pro gun” mentality or economic interest parrot this rhetoric the status quo would seem to be pretty stable.
I am aware of only one movement that has the potential to begin a rational dialogue on gun (bullet) violence and a myriad of other problems that beset our nation. That is no labels.org. If you,as I, prefer rational, adult conversation with others to find common ground, then check it out.
Otherwise we will probably continue to be subjected to ideological rhetorical “shots over the bow”.
Jim Gibson
Acosta, you are looking to placate those that have no “testicles” to fight this very important issue of keeping our 2nd Ammendment rights. We MUST not give an inch on this issue. It is not to keep our right to hunt but to keep safe from a tyrannical government. E. Strauch – you are wrong – it was because of a tyrannical monarchy that this became part of our founding documents. Let us not forget how the many dictators in history were able to take over, it was because they disarmed their population (Hitler is only one example).
Never give up the 2nd Ammendment!!!!!!!!!!