January 24, 2013

It’s Time to Jail the NRA

Mike Bond writes:

It’s time to jail the National Rifle Association Directors as accessories to mass murder. For once again a madman with automatic rifles has slaughtered our children. And we rid ourselves of the NRA’s political accomplices, the Senators and Congressmen who vote to legalize weapons of mass murder. The time has come.

If the United States were a civilized, rational nation this horror could never have happened. But we have become an errant, self-pitying, dysfunctional, and emotionally and fiscally bankrupt society run by a corporate-political clique that sells us nice visions of ourselves while they rob us blind and inject our minds with poison.

Over 13 years ago, after the Columbine School Massacre, I wrote in The San Francisco Chronicle that as a hunter and gun owner I recommended the following:

  • Private ownership of handguns and assault rifles be prohibited. Their sole purpose is to kill people.
  • Ownership of rifles and shotguns be registered, like automobiles, and limited to those who have passed a licensing program and mental and criminal background tests.
  • Advertisement of guns be prohibited in all media.
  • Gun-related political contributions be prohibited.
  • All media, particularly the Internet, be controlled for the level of violence. We spend billions to restrict trace chemicals in our children’s foods but scarcely a penny to govern what goes into their minds.

Obviously, none of this has happened. There have been 36 major massacres since then, each bloodbath aided and abetted by the National Rifle Association. Mass murder weapons are far easier to obtain now than they were then.

We are talking about murder here: cold, calculated murder. For even the NRA fanatics – even our pay-for-hire politicians – know that every law they pass to legalize mass murder weapons will result in many more deaths. This is premeditated murder. It’s time we jail them for it.

We have descended to the ninth circle of Hell, a place where so many crazy people have guns you fear you need to have guns yourself, because it’s obvious the society cannot protect us. The politicians will not protect us – they have no interest in our welfare, only in the corporate contributions they use to sell us nice visions of themselves so we keep them in office.

The police cannot protect us – they’re targets themselves. At Sandy Hook the police were earnestly reporting that they were going to do “a detailed investigation” – who cares about an investigation when your child is dead, and you know who did it and it keeps happening over and over again? And when for a long time everyone has known the cause?

Just like the insane murderer at Sandy Hook, the NRA and their fully-owned politicians have developed a pathological personality disorder, an emotional disconnect – they cannot understand the impact of their actions. They are immune to other people’s pain.

And the media is equally at fault – there’s lots of talk about emotional connections, how people are helping each other, lots of nice photos of teary mothers hugging rescued children. But what about the little girls with their heads blown away by high-powered bullets? Where are those pictures, so we can see what it’s really like? Where are the pictures of the little boys with their intestines spread across the classroom? So we can fully understand the horror?

Because until we fully understand the horror we can never change the evil in ourselves, in our nation, in our way of looking at ourselves, in our way of being governed.

The simple truth is that we are owned, and our politicians work for, Colt Arms, Ruger, Remington and all the other murder industries and their lobbyists. We are owned by the National Rifle Association.

It’s time to take our nation back. To do so, the first step is to jail the criminals. All of them.