Being the President’s child in the White House can’t be easy. Now the NRA is dragging the Obama’s daughters into the politics of gun control by producing a web video criticizing the President as “elitist” because his daughters have security details at school.
Clearly the NRA is so desperate now that it resorted to using the President’s own children in its campaign to arm our society to the teeth with assault weapons and magazines.
Disgusting.
The NRA is losing the grip it has had on Americans for too long. We don’t need assault rifles and we don’t need high-capacity ammo magazines. Finally citizens are saying it.
What we do need are laws and procedures which will help reduce the all-to-easy access to guns.
And we have to couple that with increasing the access to mental health services so that people who need care can get it before they reach a crisis. Our mental health care delivery system is not set up to help patients and families until they reach the breaking point.
Congress and state legislatures have the power to make it harder to get a gun. New York did it last night and Governor Andrew Cuomo said after signing the legislation, “We put rules in place that actually protect innocent people in society. That is what the State of New York is doing today. It says common sense can win and good people can win. And you can actually get government to work and get good things to happen. You can overpower the extremists with intelligence and with reason and common sense.”
If Congress and state leaders won’t act, the President has Executive Authorities to make changes in gun ownership that Americans are calling for. He should use them.
Last night Lawrence O’Donnell reported on The Last Word that the NRA edited its video and took the Obama girls out of it during his broadcast. The NRA’s video begins at 2:00.
I believe that it is time (or, past time) for our legislators to begin using common sense to reduce the epidemic of violence in our society by developing sensible gun control and increasing mental health services. When the Second Amendment was written, Americans had just revolted against a tyrannical government that tried to tax them without allowing them representation. We had been at war over this and won; but our citizens were NOT committing random mass murders against one another! Assault weapons that are readily available today had not yet been invented. Our Founding Fathers could not even have imagined the carnage that is taking place today — in schools, theaters, shopping centers, and other places where innocent children and adults gather. I believe in the original purpose of the Second Amendment; but, I do NOT believe that those who wrote and passed it EVER expected it to be stretched to the extremes that the NRA is claiming today!