COMMENTARY
By Reverend Al Sharpton
I want to introduce you to 2-year-old Ariyanna Prince. She's recovering after a bullet grazed her leg yesterday during a suspected drive-by shooting here in New York.
5-year-old Nizzel George was killed by a stray bullet on June 26 as he slept on his grandmother's couch in Minneapolis. One day later, 7-year-old Heaven Sutton was killed by a stray bullet as she sold candy with her mother in front of the family's home in Chicago.
And last Sunday, 4-year-old Lloyd Morgan Junior was killed by a stray bullet after watching a basketball tournament in a New York playground. I'll deliver his eulogy on Wednesday.
Those are some of the victims of gun violence in America. Each year, 10,000 people in America die from gun violence. 10,000 people. Year after year after year.
When did this become acceptable?
Earlier today, the suspect in the Colorado theater shooting was charged with 24 counts of murder and 116 counts of attempted murder. There's now some talk of new legislation. Two Democratic senators are pushing a bill to limit online sales of ammunitition. And a recent poll found that even gun owners favor some gun control.
82 percent support criminal background checks. 78 percent say concealed weapon permits shouldn't be given to those who've committed violent crimes. And 85 percent say gun rights should go hand in hand with public safety.
As we are burying babies—literally, children—caught in the crossfire of people who are reckless, and shameless, and have little value for human life, let us not continue to have the country in a crossfire of partisan brinkmanship that puts who wins the fight over the fact that the fight is for the preservation of the American people; and that our children can grow up and live productive lives.
This is what's at stake when we start burying adolescents.
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I had this discussion with a co-worker today -- he is of the opinion that: a.)online sales are good because it's cheaper; and b.)there should be no new laws about ammunition, or guns, because criminals will get what they want ANYWAY. His brother, an Iraq vet, buys online for his arsenal, and my co-worker is impressed with the savings. His views on any sort of regulation are that "regulation=ban", and that's bad because "the bad guys" will get what they want, regardless of the law. The Aurora shooter, in his opinion, would have gotten his 6000 rounds no matter what.
I can't talk sense to anyone who thinks any law is bad because bad guys don't obey laws.
Laws aren't bad in and of themselves. But what do you do about criminal access? Well short of getting rid of all the guns you aren't going to stop them from getting them. The only ones that stricter laws hurt are law abiding citizens.
Interesting take, I wonder does that philosophy carry into other areas? Pot? It is illegal and yet stoners still get it, so according to you we should make sure everyone who wants pot should have unfettered access to it.
Yeah pots illegal, so was booze at one point in time and yeah that worked so well.. it actually led to more gun violence and interestingly so does the drug trade. No giving a gun to everyone isn't an answer. Taking guns from everyone isn't the answer either. But then you knew that already.
Disarming or punishing law abiding citizens isn't going to make things better.
I am exceptionally pleased that @RevAl is continuing this conversation. Far more self reflection is required by our culture. In order to even start a conversation, this topic needs to be drummed into our consciousness. As a society, we don't seem to react until it is an emergency, and, there is no panic, if the subject becomes ignored, and, forgotten. This seems to happen very quickly, in between gaps in media coverage of this subject. Enough is enough, and we need to see a constant pounding on this, from responsible news media.
Two of the states/cities mentioned already have severely restrictive bans and restrictions. Re-enforcing the fact that gun bans are useless. We need to get more severe on the criminals and not have a revolving door justice system.
If bad guys can't clear background checks how do they get Guns? from someone purchasing them for them that can, they need to track those consistently buying huge amounts of guns and make them verify they still have possession of those weapons.
This ignores the fact that there is a huge black market that has nothing to do with legal purchases. Guns stolen from homes and businesses routinely find there way to the street and into the hands of criminals.
Where are the pictures of the two year old dead body? Fight fire with fire, the gop has no problem at all showing us all what an aborted fetus looks like, why cannot we present disgusting pictures to make the point stick?
There will be more children killed if we increase gun control. Look at Mexico, they have strict gun control laws and only the Cartels have guns. There have been more than 47,000 civilians killed in Mexico thanks to their Government taking away the right to defend yourself and your family. Mexico's gun control has destroyed its economy, safety and law enforcement. If we continue to let our Government further erode our right to defend ourselves, we will be just like Mexico where only the criminals have guns and the rest of us are at their mercy. Guns don’t kill people, people kill people. Crime has gone down as more and more of us regular Joes carry weapons. We defend our homes, family and property from those who endanger them. The Government is only trying to stop the sell of ammo and fire arms through the internet because they cannot freely track the amount of ammo that one has and they are scared. The Government “shall” fear its people, not the other way around. That was our founding father’s words. If we don’t fight for our freedoms, we will one day wake up to find we are told what to watch, what to and what not to ingest, what time to sleep as well as how many children to have. Socialism is slowly creeping in. Our weapons are one way to preserve our freedoms and defend ourselves from our own Government.
ALSO, up is down and down is up, right is left and left is right, day is night and night is day
More than 50 children a week die as a result of gunshot wounds. Couldn't you, Reverend Al, post pictures of each of them, along with a profile of what their aspirations were, etc. at the end of the week, in much the same way as the photos of the children shot down in the Newtown massacre were posted after the tragic event. And keep posting them until these intransigent members of Congress wake up to the fact there are 313,000,000 Americans who are not members of the NRA, and take steps to protect our children, at least.
Many programs post photos of soldiers who have been killed in Afghanistan, why not the children?