It is hard to believe that all of this noise about doing something about gun violence as the result of the latest mass shooting is anything more than just that; noise. If all of those elementary school children could die at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Americans could become angry and raise the decibels about confronting the issue of gun violence and yet nothing happened as a result of it, it is hard to envision a situation that could occur that would make something actually happen aside from a lot of noise.
I realize that adults also lost their lives in this tragedy and my intension is not to marginalize those lost lives by placing emphasis on the children whose lives were lost. But, instead, my intension is to emphasize how numb we must have become to this kind of thing in America to know that all of these children died such a violent and unwarranted death and yet do absolutely nothing about it. Perhaps some of these deaths could have been prevented if when previous tragedies like Sandy Hook occurred we had put reasonable gun laws in place.
But we will never know because every attempt to establish such laws has been successfully apposed. The opposition to these laws has usually been led by the NRA even while polls show that many of its members are not opposed to them. This leads some to wonder why the NRA is opposed to reasonable gun laws and why they continue to always hammer home their ‘slippery slope’ mantra.
I read an article in the New York Times by Alan Berlow entitled ‘Who the N.R.A. Really Speaks For.’ Mr. Berlow opened that article with the following words:
An angry and exasperated President Obama, speaking to the nation last Thursday after the slaughter in Roseburg, Ore., made one oblique reference to the National Rifle Association, asking gun owners to question whether their “views are properly being represented by the organization that suggests it’s speaking for you.”
According to that article, a 2012 poll found that “87 percent of gun owners supported criminal background or ‘Brady’ checks for all gun purchases.” It further stated that by December of that same year “92 percent of Americans supported background checks for all buyers, including those buying on the Internet and at gun shows.”
Although the decibels were raised, the NRA once again simply circled the wagons and waited for them to die down, which they did, before it launched its own devastating – and once again extremely effective – counterattack. Those politicians controlled by the NRA licked the NRA’s boots, we American voters soon became frustrated and lost interest and things returned to what we have come to accept as normal in our country. No reasonable deterrents were put into place in an effort to mitigate the proliferation of gun violence and the NRA once again faded into the shadows and is, in all likelihood, lurking there while watching and waiting for their next opportunity to pounce on a helpless hapless public.
Chalk up another victory for the NRA under the relentless and effective leadership of its president, Wayne LaPierre. And chalk up another devastating loss to the American people and especially to all of those people who have lost loved ones to gun violence. American voters must accept the fact that the longstanding effectiveness of the NRA is due in no small part to the failure of too many American voters who fail – for whatever reason – to exercise their right to vote.
Those Americans who advocate for the implementation of reasonable gun control laws must also accept the fact that the NRA will continue to dictate the agenda on issues surrounding guns as long as American voters allow them to do so. We have the power to change the NRA’s dominance on this issue if we vote. Our votes can decide how long we continue to have bootlicking politicians who constantly ignore our voices and listen to those of the rich and powerful people and organizations that line their coffers during election cycles.
I recommend that you read Alan Berlow’s article ‘Who the N.R.A. Really Speaks For.’ It will give you a shocking overview of the kind of power that the NRA wields. While I do not agree with the blanket statement in Mr. Berlow’s article, which states that “…the N.R.A. [is] no longer the voice of law-abiding gun owners, but rather a voice for criminals” I found it to be highly informative. Therefore, for your convenience, I have provided a link to it. You can read the article in its entirety simply by clicking on the link.
Eulus Dennis