If a significant majority of the population is in agreement it goes beyond an editorial and becomes a call to action. I firmly believe that a majority of Americans feel that it is time for better checks and regulations while a handful of special interests are waving their hands and shouting themselves purple faced to distract the undecided.
Eventually the mass shootings are going to tip the scale of public opinion. And there will be another one. Soon. I'm betting before Christmas day. It doesn't matter by whom, anymore. Although it was kind of comical to see the relief the wing nuts took in the fact that the last wacko shooters had Islamic roots. As if that fact obliterated the other forty shootings that went before it and were committed by wackos with other religious beliefs. Or by wackos with mental health issues, racial issues, gov issues or dating issues, property issues.
To be extra confrontational, I say let's count the shootings that take only two or three lives, the toddlers who blow their brains out with daddy's handgun, the teenage gang- bangers, the western Kansas cowboys who get on the deer stand at five a.m., load their rifles and pop a couple of beers. Let's even count the brandishings, the road rage incidents, the armed neighborhood arguments that are defused before going bloody. I have seen two of those in my lifetime and believe me, they take a toll.
Can you guarantee that the next gun incident won't be in your neighborhood, at your favorite restaurant, the gas station on the corner, your aging parent's neighborhood? At your teen's next party? All of the prayers, bluster and hand wringing are doing nothing to insure public safety and, above all, we have a right to that under the constitution.
Continuing to blow on about the same old, same old is like turning your back on a tsunami. I'm talking about the kind of shift in public opinion that has caught the conservatives, the rigidly religious, the intolerant, the good ole boy confederate flag wavers, the Republican party, square in the buttocks so many times in the last decade. Better switch on something besides Fux News. Look over your shoulder. The times they are a changing. --s6