Dear NRA, Part II:
Oh, my … I am so disappointed in you, the leadership of the National Rifle Association.
I. Am. SO. Disappointed.
You had a chance to take the lead in making this country a safer place.
You had a chance to say, “Yes, there are reasonable limits to be had.”
You had a chance to say, “Yes, we agree … private ownership of weapons created solely to kill other human beings do not belong in the hands of private citizens. And no, there is no reason for private citizens to have large-capacity magazines.”
You had a chance to do so much.
Instead, you sent out Wayne LaPierre, who blamed everyone and everything but the culprits – those who think that every gun is a good gun – and who called for a cop in every school – and then had the audacity to ask the federal government to pay for that.
“The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” Mr. LaPierre said at your news conference on Friday morning in Washington.
Laws that established gun-free schools zones have, your man said, told “every insane killer in America that schools are the safest place to inflict maximum mayhem with minimum risk.”
Your man claimed that “20,000 other laws have failed,” so why pass any more? (Talk about giving up … or is that a diversion to keep us from doing the right thing …?)
And oh, it’s all the fault of the media, the movies, the video games … (as if you, the NRA, doesn’t support the ownership of these weapons that glorify death and destruction) …
That’s the best you can do?!?!
As the leading organization for guns and gun safety, the best you can do is dig in your heels and pretend that you’ve done nothing wrong? And that there’s nothing good you can do
May I say, again, how disappointed I am in you?
Please do not tell me, once again, that “guns don’t kill people. People kill people.” Well, no duh, nimrod!
I’m well aware that guns don’t load themselves, point themselves, pull the triggers themselves. I know people do that.
I also know that having guns around people who are upset, who are arguing, who are depressed, who suffer from mental illness, makes it far more likely that someone will be shot.
That is, after all, what happened at Columbine High School. At Virginia Tech. In Tucson. And that may be the reason that 28 people lost their lives in Newtown, CT.
Someone who really should never have been near a gun got a gun – and a spit-load of ammunition, and large-capacity magazines – and shattered the lives of so many. No, he didn’t buy them. His mother did. And then Adam Lanza killed her. With her own weapon(s). Do you not see that this in and of itself is a good reason for people not to own these guns? Don’t you see this?????
Do you not see, NRA, why so many of us have had it? Why so many of us are saying, “Please help us stop this violence”?
We don’t want an OK Corral set up at every single school. We don’t want the next disturbed person to decide that shooting up a school with police protection would be a pretty cool way to prove that cops can’t stop bullets any better than 6-year-olds, and that shooting up a school protected by cops will make the shooter’s name live in infamy.
What we want is some sanity.
What we want is some safety.
We want it to be harder to get a gun license than it is to get a driver’s license. (I mean, really … there are no tests necessary to get a license to own an item that’s sole purpose is to take a life, human or otherwise?)
We want mandated instruction … you know, just like for driver’s licenses.
We want every loophole closed. And no grandfathering of guns already owned.
BAN those bloody assault weapons! BAN the large-capacity magazines! REQUIRE safety courses! REQUIRE testing before licensing!
And hear me clearly, NRA:
I AM NOT SAYING AMERICANS CANNOT HAVE GUNS.
So don’t you dare come out and attack me as a lily-livered liberal who hates guns!
Do. Not. Go. There.
I want sanity. I want safety.
I want there to be fewer places to buy guns than there are McDonald’s or Starbucks.
I want a sane approach to gun ownership.
And I want assault weapons gone.
Period.
Hunting rifles? Fine.
Guns used for target shooting? Fine.
Shotguns? Fine.
But why …why … does anyone need a 9mm handgun? Or a weapon developed for the military? Why?
Oh, my dear NRA:
I had such high hopes for you.
But since you are choosing to ignore the calls for sanity in gun laws, we will move forward without you. We will not give in to your bullying and your threats. We will not attempt to accommodate you.
We will, instead, do what God is calling us to do: To care for each other. To look at what the community needs. To set aside our desires for the good of all of God’s children.
I do hope that at some point – preferably sooner rather than later – you join us in this effort.
Really.
There is so much good that we can do together.
As Rabbi David Saperstein, Director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, said at the National Religious Leaders Press Conference in Remembrance of the Newtown tragedy: “The indiscriminate distribution of guns is an offense against God and humanity. Our gun-flooded, violence-prone society has turned weapons into idols. And the appropriate religious response to idolatry is sustained moral outrage.”
Which, whether you like it or not, we are going to show – moral outrgage, I mean – until we win this fight.
As The Rt. Rev. Mariann Budde, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, said on Friday, on the One-Week Anniversary of the Newtown Massacre, commemorated at the Washington National Cathedral, “It is only natural to wonder in our worst moments whether God has abandoned us. Yet the more compelling spiritual question isn’t where God was last Friday morning, but rather, where we were. For God has no body on earth but ours.”
That’s what you don’t seem to get, NRA. We are God’s body on this earth.
And we have had enough.