Comments?
In the April 22, 1999 issue of the LA Times, Charlton Heston, President of the National Rifle Association, was quoted as saying that the organization refused to cancel or postpone their scheduled yearly meeting as a sign of respect towards the children murdered in Littleton, Colorado. In fact, Heston stated that the NRA must, "stand in somber but unshakable unity, even in this time of anguish."
What makes this even more revolting is that the NRA is scheduled to meet in Denver, Colorado, just a few miles from Columbine High School, site of the carnage. In fact, their meeting in Colorado was originally meant to celebrate their impending victories in the Colorado legislature where truly obscene new laws were nearly guaranteed of passage. These clowns want to make it easy for any "law-abiding citizen" (whatever that means - John Hinkley was a law abiding citizen until the moment he shot Reagan and Brady)) to carry concealed weapons at all times. They also want to prevent any Colorado city from enacting any gun law stronger than the useless laws that the state has been convinced to pass. Finally, they want to protect the gun industry from lawsuits from the victims of gun related violence. These are the mental aberrations of people who have never matured past their love of the childish past time playing Cowboys and Indians.
This unfeeling and ignorant attitude towards the children killed and the families left behind in far too many of our nation's schools is, at best, completely unacceptable. There is absolutely no doubt that this horror could never have occurred without the guns that these two children had such easy and immediate access to. To have walked through the school with knives or bats or slingshots and their homemade bombs would have been a situation that could have been brought under control in any number of ways long before the body count grew to such tragic levels.
I realize that the NRA is a valuable source of campaign contributions to most politicians and that money speaks far louder then even the cries of anguish and sorrow that has been the rule in far too many school these past years. Nevertheless, it is time for all decent people rise up and to firmly refuse to ever again take such a sad and unthinking group seriously.
Understand, I own weapons, myself, but I can not, in any way, support the stands that the NRA has become so well known for. They have gone too far and must be reminded that they are only a very small minority in this nation. They must be shown that their money and lobbyists can no longer place my children in danger in the one place that must always remain safe, their schools.
In conclusion, the media can only report on the video games or movies or whatever that the two boys watched or played but they seem unable or unwilling to focus their attention on the fact that, along with the many societal ills that were so evident at that high school, without the easy access to guns that these two boys had, this grievous event would never have happened. I am not recommending the abolition of guns nor any drastic new laws. I am, however, stating that any government official who continues to kneel before the NRA's lobbyists are fully and completely responsible for every single death in every school from this moment on.
Your constituent,