The Latest Mass Shooting At The DC Naval Yard...

The Latest Mass Shooting At The Naval Yard In DC….

Most of the time, like now, when there is a tragedy, I prefer to write about it when our passions are tempered… hoping by then that the reportage in discussing said tragedy would be objective; of course, there are certain root causes behind many of our tragedies where the passions cannot be tempered or where many of us are incapable of being objective like those passions associated with gun control. We have been having a protracted debate on gun ownership for a long time, and, more than likely, the debate will continue for the foreseeable future. We have seen and heard the many discussions on the D.C. Naval Yard shooting where a dozen or so of our citizens lost their lives, and, once again, both sides of the gun debate were out in force blaming each other or disagreeing on the root causes for owning and not owning guns.

We all know that those who oppose the unfettered gun ownership would blame the National Rifle Association (NRA) for the latest mass gun shooting tragedy; and conversely, that the gun advocates were going to take refuge in the Constitution’s Second Amendment. Personally, for me, I see merit in both sides’ position because for the life of me I do not understand why some gun advocates do not want back ground checks or why there are those who oppose all gun ownership. In the same vein, the ownership of guns is sanctioned by our Constitution and its pedigree is more settled than the right to murder babies under the recently made up law of Abortion under Roe.

Tonight, there are those who are going to commit unspeakable crimes by using guns and tonight too, there are those who, because of owning guns will successfully prevent tragedies - I say this to underscore the merit to both sides of the debate. For every Columbine, there are innocents who could have saved their lives if they had possessed a weapon. In New Jersey, about a month or so ago, we watched on the Tele - because there was as camera recording in the home - as a thug robber viciously beat down a lady in her home… in seeing it, I wished that this lady had a gun to shoot the perpetrator in his head... incidentally, had she die, those who opposed guns would have had nothing to say.

The old refrain by some of those who want to ban guns is that such a ban would prevent many a tragedy – this is true… but what of other tragedies? What of those who died while Texting or using the cell phone… do we blame all those inventors (Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, etc) who gave us the benefits of the advent of modern communications? My beloved wife, who is a social worker, can tell you how much alcohol has contributed to the breakdown of the traditional nuclear family - are we then going to blame the liquor stores and legally and civilly punish the makers of Jack Daniels, Vodka, and Ann Hauser Bush, among others, especially since the right to peddle and consume the spirits is found in our 21^st Amendment… what makes the gun manufacturers different from those who make telephones, alcohol, or anything we can trace that caused innocents to die?

The genies to many of our tragedies have been let out of their respective bottles and the only remedy left is that of our free will… however, I am not going to pretend that money by way of lobbyists do not influence the freedom to engage these genies and that some lobbyists do not have more influence than others... therein lies the imbalance and the continuing debate when we say that one group has more influence than others - but that is the nature of our Republican form of government where sometimes there is tyranny of the majority or tyranny of the minority, which propel us to find that illusive balance.