I’ve reached my limit, and I hope you have, too.
I’m disgusted by American politicians in Congress and in our state legislatures who take seemingly endless millions of dollars from the National Rifle Association and similar organizations, politicians who vote against measures like universal background checks, bump-stock bans and bans on assault weapons, and then who tweet out their sympathy and sorrow for parents whose children were murdered in the most recent mass shooting.
I’m disgusted by the legions of people who parrot the NRA propaganda, ludicrously harping about jargon, about forefathers, about the need to protect ourselves from — what? The British? The Canadians? Kim Jong Un’s nukes?
I’m disgusted with having to listen to the tripe of the gun lobbyists and their complicit politicians and stooges who can listen to a child talk about hiding from shooters — and begging their mom to call police for help because someone near them has been shot and is screaming in pain — and then tweet out how they are praying for them and theirs.
If there were to be one law, one rule, one mandate that comes from the latest high-school mass shooting, it would be that elected officials would be prohibited from tweeting out about their thoughts and prayers.
Nobody wants to hear it. We know where their sympathies truly lie: with the gun lobby, the gun nuts and the cash they provide their campaigns. We know that they fear the NRA and the gun-nut base of the Republican Party will rise up against them. They worry that they’ll be the victim of TV attack ads like the ones that the NRA has funded against their opponents.
And we know that they will parrot talking points about crazy people running cars into crowds or perpetrating knife attacks, or how this is just about mental illness.
They want us to believe that mass shootings, like earthquakes and hurricanes are, what, an act of God? Unpreventable because of the video games and movies everybody else in the world watches? They parrot lame memes about having to get crazy people away from their guns instead keeping of guns away from crazy people.
I’ve seen first-hand what the lack of gun control can do to a community. I’ve seen the terror on the faces of parents who realize it was their child who was murdered. I know how critical it is to make this stop.
Like an abusive spouse, these politicians will console us into saying that this time, this time they’ll get help. They’ll talk. They’ll look into it.
And the days will slip away for a week or two until there’s another mass shooting. Another freak with a an AR-15, a pile of ammo and a diseased brain. Of course this about mental illness. No sane person commits mass murder.
America, don’t listen to it anymore. It’s a lie. Walk out on these politicians controlled by gun-dollars and their too-far-gone ammophile supporters.
We have a critical election in a few months. Much of your state legislature, all of the U.S. House and some key U.S. Senate seats are open. Make it a priority for whomever you vote for to commit to preventing children from being murdered in their schools, and not just talk about it or offer tweeted thoughts and prayers. Support only those who will truly work to keep people being murdered during mass shootings in movie theaters, or night clubs or at concerts, malls, grocery stores and at meetings during work. Make them prove it with their voting records.
And if they tell you directly or indirectly that there’s really nothing we can do, or that gun control isn’t the answer, or you have a better chance of being killed in a car wreck, leave them. Don’t stay for more abuse upon abuse. Don’t let what happened at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School happen at your child’s school.
Vote to leave them. This time, you take control and tell them that if they don’t get help this time, if they don’t truly change their ways and sponsor real gun control legislation and vote for real gun control legislation and turn down campaign money from the NRA and organizations like them, that, this time, it’s over. Ask them, “Do you take money from the NRA? Why?”
Tell them you’re done. You won’t listen to their nonsensical talking points any more. Their spin on gun statics that are as ludicrous as President Trump’s explanation of global warming.
America is not so stupid as to believe that there is nothing the government can do to limit and prevent mass shootings. We know this is an American problem, and that children slaughtered in their schools is too high a price to pay for the freedom live without common sense gun laws.
Make them stop saying it. Make them stop saying they’re so sorry, that they feel so bad, that they’re, again, praying for parents whose children were murdered at school with an AR-15 — instead of doing something to make the carnage stop.
Tell them to save it for the NRA.
Follow @EditorDavePerry on Twitter or Facebook or reach him at 303-750-7555 or dperry@AuroraSentinel.com