Listen Up America • Update Spring 2014 "Just like tobacco, guns do kill people."

Let's install a chip in every gun in America. If a gun is found without a chip the gun is to be scrapped and melted down. We Americans have GPS chips in our cars and in our phones and in our laptops and in our dogs and our cats and on many felons with ankle bracelets and even in some of our kids. So it is proven the technology works and works well. Authorities would have access to the position of any gun, anywhere in America at any time. This is not an invasion of privacy. This is a reasonable step in the prevention of gun murders and gun accidents in our nation. This could save untold lives. The NRA and gun people will not allow our congress or our states or our cities to effectively control gun sales and misuse so let's simply track where the people with guns are located. Then if some people kill or maim with a gun we'll be able to find them and the weapon for police and the courts to use as evidence at trial. 

In January 1936 Hitler's Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels declared, "We can do without butter, but despite all our love of peace not without arms. One cannot shoot with butter, but with guns." And for once in his wretched life Goebbels said something truthful. As a result of his media deceptions most savvy people consider Goebbels the father of modern propaganda. Now even with all the delirious militant gun carriers in Fly-Over-America and the lavish NRA spin doctors in Washington let's try to put some reason in a look at guns and the impact of gunshot trauma on the regular people of our nation. 

A couple of years ago January 2011 in Tucson, Arizona US Representative Gabrielle Giffords was direly injured by gunshot. A beautiful and bright nine year old girl Christina-Taylor Green was murdered by gunshot. A US Federal Judge John Roll was murdered by gunshot. Representative Gifford's aide Gabe Zimmerman was murdered by gunshot. Her husband George tried to shield her, but Dorothy "Dot" Morris was murdered by gunshot. Dorwan Stoddard tried to shield his wife Mavy and he was murdered by gunshot. A church volunteer Phyllis Schneck was murdered by gunshot. Susan Hileman, Pamela Simon, Ronald Barber, James Tucker, Kenneth Veeder, George Morris, James Fuller, Randy Gardner, Mary Reed, Kenneth Dorushka, and Bill Badger were all wounded by gunshot. The shooter bought his automatic hand gun with an extended thirty shot clip at a mall sporting goods store. Prior to trial, the shooter was diagnosed with schizophrenia and he is now in prison. How could these murders have been prevented? 

In July of 2012 a dozen people were murdered and over seventy injured at a movie house in Aurora, Colorado. Most of the murdered were young people: Jonathan Blunk, Alexander J. Boik, Jesse Childress, Gordon Cowden, Jessica Ghawi, John Larimer, Alex Sullivan, Alexander C. Teves, Rebecca Wingo. The shooter used several weapons including a Smith & Wesson M&P 15 (military & police 15) assault rifle. How could these lives have been saved? 

Six months later, in December of 2012 another rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary in Sandy Hook, Connecticut.  A very damaged man killed his mother and then drove to a nearby school where he murdered Rachel D'Avino a teacher's aide, Dawn Hochsprung school principal, Anne Marie Murphy a teacher's aide, Lauren Rousseau a teacher, Victoria Leigh Soto a teacher,  Mary Sherlach, school psychologist, and first grade students Charlotte Bacon, Daniel Barden, Olivia Engel, Josephine Gay, Dylan Hockley, Madeleine Hsu, Catherine Hubbard, Chase Kowalski, Jesse Lewis, Ana Marquez-Greene, James Mattioli, Grace McDonnell, Emilie Parker, Jack Pinto, Noah Pozner, Caroline Previdi, Jessica Rekos, Avielle Richman, Benjamin Wheeler, Allison Wyatt.  These are not just names. These are six year old and seven year old little kids. Twenty six people who were attending school or just teaching were murdered. After murdering all these people and wounding others the shooter killed himself.  The NRA gun people propaganda machine noted that the gun was given to the shooter by his own mother. The mother should never have been allowed to buy that gun. 

Recently this June 2013 a man firing an assault rifle along a street and at a college in Santa Monica, California killed five people. That man should never have been sold that assault rifle.

This past September week another twelve people were murdered in the Washington Navy Yard.  The shooter was a schizophrenic who heard voices in the wind, and the shooter was able to easily get cleared for a legal permit to carry a weapon by the vile adolescent cowboy culture of Texas.  

Now in June 2014 more murders of police officers in Las Vegas by psychotic white supremacists.  Last month a teacher and security administrator in Watts, Los Angeles was murdered in a drive-by shooting.  The murders continue every day in America.  The NRA and Wayne Lapierre continue to aid and abet the crimes of murder and child endangerment in our America. 

According to the FBI in Washington, every 58 minutes in 2009 someone in the USA was murdered by a gun either a handgun, or a rifle, or a shotgun, or some other unknown type of firearm. This statistic ignores the numerous wounded who may survive only to be subjected to months of recovery or those with spinal injuries whose lives are shattered forever. 

To not do something about all of these killings and all these sadistic injuries is cowardly and demented. It is simple ethics to consider how more murders may be prevented. What is the right thing to do about this? 

A few years in the past Americans smoked cigarettes in bars and in restaurants and even in elevators and on airplanes. Sometime in the 1990's an awareness came over the social consciousness of our nation. Scientists proved that cigarette smoke cause cancer. The scientists later proved that people who do not smoke can also get cancer from cigarette smoke just by breathing smokey air. So we stopped smoking so much. We passed laws to prevent people from smoking in public facilities, and then in work places. One solid reason for the new laws was that each government entity held a responsibility to protect the safety and health of the people. A cowardly government may be brought to account for relinquishing that government's responsibility to protect the people. A gun is no different than a cigarette. A gun murders people just like a cigarette murders people. 

The gun people and the NRA people have a propaganda mantra about people killing people not guns. That is a lie. Guns do kill people. Proof positive, ask any mother from the Tucson murders or the Aurora, Colorado murders or the Sandy Hook murders. Replace that lie with something truthful like "Only cowards carry guns." The gun people and the NRA people certainly will hate this epithet. They are cowards. The gun people and the NRA people are fearful of unseen evils. The gun people and the NRA people have always clearly known the price of everything, and the value of nothing. 

Conservatively about 250,000 people are living with Spinal Cord Injury in the USA. Of those about 13% are a result of gunshot wounds according to the American Medical Association. That is 32,500 people who may be paraplegic by gunshot and confined to wheelchairs or sometimes they may be quadraplegics by gunshot and cannot care for themselves at all. In the most extreme cases care would be provided for the rest of their lives by their families or possibly through state and federal crime victim funds. 

The human sorrow from gunshot violence cannot be measured. The medical cost of treating gunshot injuries is multiple billions of dollars every year. The cost of ambulances and emergency treatments at the scene of the violence is multiple billions of dollars every year. And police investigations for gunshot crimes is multiple billions of dollars every year. All these costs are born usually by city and county governments. There is no other way to cover those costs except by taxing the purchase of guns and ammunition. But the federal government's hands are tied by the deranged and cowardly NRA gun people in Washington. 

That deranged Nazi Joe Goebbels tagged the first rule of propaganda:  Loudly declare that the evil you are doing is "really" being done by your opponent.  Psychologists call this projection.  If some psychopath has a bag of money to buy media time the spinmeisters can succeed easily in distracting many, many people from the real problem just like the psychopaths did in 1930s Germany. 

The gun people and the NRA gun people say that only people kill people.  But that propaganda lie gives us a warning that we should prevent psychotic gun people from getting guns and ammunition. We need to severely restrict the types of guns sold in America. We need to severely regulate how guns are sold. We need to put in place a precise and comprehensive investigation of any buyer's background.  Only cowardly people oppose background checks. 

Our city and county and state and federal representatives cannot pass any new laws that regulate the sale of guns. So let the President declare that sales of guns and ammunition must be regulated for the safety of the people of the nation under the US Constitution's Preamble "to insure the domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our prosperity." 

Legally and ethically the Preamble trumps the Second Amendment. We need to codify harsh penalties for the illegal sale of guns. It is a heinous failure of our local and federal governments to not protect the regular people of America. We have a "Do Not Fly" list. Why not a "Do Not Buy" list to prevent psychotic and criminal people from buying guns? 

There's some foul sickness in the body politic that we have not yet vigorously demanded laws to regulate guns. The infection continues to corrode America's future, gunshot murder by gunshot murder. Any controls will take enormous resolve.  The propaganda spin by the gun people and the NRA gun people is oppressively loud and lavishly financed. Perhaps now at last there's some change in the air to quash that flood of distortion. 

A dead tenderhearted girl. A dead young father in a movie theater.  A dead first grader in a sheltered classroom surrounded by one after another dead school mate. Only cowards carry guns. 

(Please note this post updates for the third time, the commentary originally published in January 2011. The story of guns and gun people has become a continuing American cliche of horror and unremitting disgrace. The NRA has found a way to stop any legislation in the US congress, and the NRA is targeting Colorado legislators who voted for gun regulation. The NRA is clearly a propaganda cabal that aids and abets murder.)