BAN MANUFACTURING OF AUTOMATIC WEAPONS: AN EDITORIAL ON THE SUBJECT OF GUN CONTROL:

In reference to the Sandy Hook Elementary massacre:  

We need to first remember hat in the days when a man armed himself with a sharp stick, a rock, club, or sword, he had to do his killing up close and personal.  Furthermore, a man could do only as much carnage as his strength – and the strength and skill of his indented victims –  would allow.

Eventually humans invented the cross bow.  Battle deaths escalated.  Eventually, humans invented firearms.  Battle deaths escalated.  Humans invented automatic firearms.  Casualties in America’s wars  skyrocketed.   We can only speculate on how many lives could have been spared had the American Civil War been fought with swords and if the American army had defeated the rebels quickly instead of dragging out the war for 4 years.  Union generals could drag the war out for years thanks in part to mass manufacturing of firearms.  The Vietnam War illustrated that point with even more clarity.  The French, the Americans, the Vietnamese, the Russians, The Chinese could not have dragged that war out from 1954 to 1975 if they did not have mass production of weapons, particularly automatic weapons.  


COMMENT ON PRO-GUN PROPAGANDA


Since the Sandy Hook massacre, pro-gun lobbyiests have used various Internet methods to publish testimony supposedly given by Darrell Scott —  the father of Rachel Scott, a victim of the Columbine High School shootings in Littleton, Colorado —  before House Judiciary subcommittee on crime on May 27, 1999.

I will comment on two of its supposed quotes.

QUOTE: “ The first recorded act of violence was when Cain slew his brother Abel out in the field. The villain was not the club he used, neither was it the NCA - the National Club Association - the true killer was Cain, and the reason for the murder could only be found in his heart. In the days that followed the Columbine tragedy, I was amazed at how quickly fingers began to be pointed at groups such as the NRA.”

REPLY:   From a strict text point of view, Scott had the doctrine wrong here in equating the Columbine high school killers with Cain.   Cain discovered the great secret of how he could get rich by killing someone.   Harris and Klebold did not kill for gain:  they killed to kill, including themselves.  The architect of this sort of strategy was (not Cain)  Satan. 

QUOTE:   “Erik and Dylan would not have been stopped by more gun laws or metal detectors. No amount of laws can stop someone who spends months of planning this type of massacre. The real villain lies within our own hearts.”

With due respect, Scott got this point wrong.   Metal detectors could have detected the weapons at the doors.  The laws could have stopped Klebold and Harris in the use of automatic weapons if the laws had outlawed the manufacture of automatic weapons.   Harris and Klebold’s effectiveness would have been reduced by some quantum factor if the laws had restricted the sophistication of weapons they could access. 

In the history of human weaponry, automatic weapons are mankind’s truly barbaric weapon.  Any untrained weakling can kill dozens of people as long as his trigger finger holds up and as long as he has a supply of bullets.  Weapons designers made these weapons  not for sport or hunting game.   Their purpose is mass killing of humans. 

The automatic weapon has succeeded in making both war and civilian life more bloody and dangerous. 

It should be obvious that merchants should not sell automatic-weapons to mentally unbalanced people.   The problem is mentally ill people do not walk around with labels on them.  It should also be obvious that manufacturers and merchants of automatic weapons make a lot of money in this business –  whether the buyers are crazed or not.   They will try to convince us that the weapons are not the problem, that people are the problem.   And they will sell all the weapons they can to the problem.

Both the weapons and the people are the problems.

THE POINT

In the 1960s, one out of two Americans owned guns.   Today, one of three Americans own guns.  However, that 33 percent has stockpiled the largest number of weapons ever collected in the whole history of the country.  Many of that 33 percent of Americans own multiple weapons or cashes of weapons.   Federal law should not allow a minority of people to stockpile themselves as private armies. 

THE CALL TO ACTION
We Americans have reached a point where both American and international law should outlaw the sale of automatic firearm weapons.   Certainly civilians should not be able to buy them.    Obviously unbalanced violent mentally ill people should not buy them. 

Ultimately,  outlawing manufacture of these weapons should be our real goal.   May the 21st century be the age when atomic bombs and automatic weapon came to an end.