The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
The goal should be zero guns
The national Republican agenda cannot be seen as anything other than prodeath.
Health care? Take it from those who can’t pay.
Refugees? Throw them in camps, take their kids and let them die.
Climate change? Not happening, even as we see the Arctic on fire.
Guns? Sell them to anyone, no background checks required.
Their platform seems to be like a mosquito: Let the rich suck the blood out of America and leave the underclasses a desiccated husk, killed by lack of insurance, government neglect, cataclysmic weather and guns.
If you think I’m being over the top, my words are not even close to the horror we’ve seen this weekend — 31 dead in two mass shootings, one by a white nationalist in Texas and another by a man whose sister was among those he killed.
I could Google a list of every mass shooting that’s popped up in the news, that’s seared into our memory, starting with Sandy Hook, going back to Columbine, perhaps stopping in Las Vegas or Orlando or Virginia Tech or Parkland or … you know what, the ones off the top of my head are more than enough. This is to say nothing of the shootings we see in Bridgeport and New Haven or countless cities across the country.
One shooting should have been enough.
Zero is what we should be striving for.
Zero is what most of the rest of the world sees, with their lack of heartless politicians beholden to the money of the gun lobby or their supporters who worship their guns.
When the New Zealand Christchurch mosque attack happened, their government banned assault weapons almost immediately. That’s how this is supposed to work.
I have kids. My stepdaughter is 8. She’s only just learning about the concept of death and she has pointless, terrifying “lockdown drills” in her school. That is madness. That is surrender. That means maybe fewer kids and teachers will die if a maniac with a gun bursts into her school. Not zero, fewer.
Zero is what we should all want.
I’ve shot an AK47 before on a trip to Las Vegas. Cost me about two hundred bucks at The Gun Store. I was scared holding that power in my hands. It was enough to make me realize that no one should have one of those.
I could have purchased my own AK47 at that store for a little more than what I paid to shoot it at the range.
Democrats talk about pushing for “common sense gun control” all the time. It’s often followed by “no one is trying to take your guns.”
Chris Murphy tweets about gun control every time this happens, yet he’s powerless to get anything past the selfdescribed Grim Reaper that is Mitch McConnell.
“Common sense” does not go far enough. I want to take all the guns away, melt them and use the scrap for something, anything that does not bring death.
It’s hopeless in a country where we have more guns per person than any other country in the world. It’s hopeless in a country that has seen its Supreme Court packed with ghouls who pretend “A wellregulated militia” was deleted from the Second Amendment.
Zero is what I want. Zero guns. Since I can’t get that, here’s my proposal:
You want to shoot a long gun? Store it at a range, shoot it at some targets. You need one to hunt? Bolt action rifle. You want one for home defense? Pump action shotgun. That’s it. No more handguns. No more semiautomatic weapons. No more automatic weapons.
If you think this goes too far, well, I’ve learned from the Republicans. Start with death and negotiate backwards from there. Start with death to guns.