” We have met the enemy and he is us. ” POGO
The brazen pre-meditated murder of nine African – American Christian worshipers in South Carolina, including their beloved minister, by a gun-toting, white American supremacist should serve as a wake – up call to us all. According to a survivor the murderer said : ” You rape our women, you’re taking over our country. You have to go.”
I do not fear death from foreign ISIS. I do fear death from millions of domestic racist, misogynist, homophobic haters with guns.
Our very culture has become a breeding ground for racists. The NRA is a multi – billion dollar racket that feeds the attitudes that spawned these killings. As a friend said : ” The siren song of racial hate relentlessly put out by the mainstream right finds echo in the gunshots that rang out in Charleston.” It’s easier to get a gun in this country than it is to get a driver’s license. Hell, it’s easier to get a gun than it is to vote. Yet we will not allow criminals, the mentally unstable or racists to be screened for a gun license even though 90 % of the public supports common sense background checks. This is madness.
Today in concealed – carry South Carolina the state and U.S. flags were flown at half staff – except for the Confederate flag in front of the capital which remained at the top of its pole and disrespectfully higher than those in mourning. The Governor said : ” We’ll never understand what motivates anyone to enter one of our places of worship and take the life of another.”
Really Governor ? We’ll never know ?
We do know that that Confederate flag is a repugnant, shameful reminder to every civilized human being of that state’s pro – slavery, anti – American, nullification, states rights, traitorous, secessionist, Jim Crow, segregationist past that still divides our Union today.
Our own Governor Baker went on a friendly radio station and said : ” I do believe that the reason that flag still hangs there is, you know, what I would call sort of ‘tradition’ or something like that.”
Tradition ? Really Governor ?
The tradition of racism must end now. In the words of Ronald Reagan : Governor, tear…down…that…flag.
Fred Rich LaRiccia
This is not the case in Mass. People in Colorado are proving you can have recreational pot and society doesn’t crumble. We can prove you can have a reasonable system in place for gun ownership (although there are some aspects of our laws I find nonsensical or plain absurd) and it isn’t like shredding the second amendment.
As a former NRA junior member, most members that I know support common sense gun control like background checks. It is the leadership of the NRA that is opposed.
Fred Rich LaRiccia
Some restrictions and laws are just veiled attempts at taking guns away from people or are completely unreasonable – the bill submitted by Markey and Warren re: smart guns is a good example.
Unfortunately, extremism is a good buffer against the first chip of many against your rights.
“If they can get you to believe absurdities, they can get you to commit atrocities.”
Fred Rich LaRiccia