Armed Camp USA

Photo, David Goldman, Getty images/AP on yahoo.
Mother Emanuel AME church, 21 June 2015. 

An NRA board member, Charles Cotton of Texas, had the gall to blame Rev. Pinckney, also a state Senator, for the racist murders that took place in Emanuel AME church in Charleston, SC.  "He voted against concealed-carry....Eight of his church members who might be alive if he had expressly allowed members to carry handguns in church are dead. Innocent people died because of his position on a political issue.”  

With the confederate flag flying high in the background of these obscene murders, the NRA fired its propaganda gun to let us know that the answer to violence is more violence, the answer to guns is more guns, the answer to murder and hate is to arm everyone, everywhere.  "No gun-free zones."

If the people in that Bible study group in that church had had guns, then what? Well, according to Cotton, who displayed incredible moral turpitude, they would have been able to shoot back.  That's right, to shoot back at a guy they could not ever have imagined, in their wildest dreams, would be there in the first place. But the church would have been a safer place; sure it might have become  a battleground of self-defense, but eight people would have survived the onslaught. Alas, Rev. Pinckney himself was shot dead because he didn't carry a gun, and had voted against "concealed carry."  Yep, he "expressly" voted against "concealed carry," America.  That would make it legal to hide and carry weapons into churches, restaurants, school, theaters, shopping malls, and other public places. The reverand shot himself in the foot, as it were. Too bad.

Really? Do you really believe this kind of thinking? So low, and so vile? Is this what America is buying, over and over again? Is this what we are allowing to continue after every tragic demonstration that guns kill innocent people who don't think like Cotton and the NRA?

Can you imagine Rev. Pinckney hiding a gun in his jacket pocket or his pastor's robe every day before going to church or the legislature or Bible studies or family gatherings, in case he might be murdered by a madman with a gun? Do you imagine his even thinking such a thing? Would anyone in his Bible study group think like this?

Do you want to live every day as if you might need to shoot someone before they shoot you? Do you want to take a gun with you before leaving your house, wherever you go, in a ritual like brushing your teeth?  Do you really want to live like this?

Who thinks this way?  How many Americans really think this way?  Why would any of us, living in an advanced country in this century, want to live this way?

The NRA is selling a sick, twisted ideology. It wants to turn our country into an armed camp.  Armed Camp USA. The United States of Arms.  It's profitable for gun manufacturers and gun sellers, multi-billion dollar industries, but it's totally twisted for the rest of us.

Why are we buying it? Expose it for what it really is.  As twisted as the white supremacist who went into that historic African-American church with a concealed weapon and the intent "to kill blacks."  As twisted as the racist who sat with his intended victims for an hour, surrounded by loving, accepting people, then firing away.

The NRA should be brought down with the Confederate flag.  Wake up America. This can't be the kind of country you want to live in.


On gun control laws:
“This is not a matter of any single mass tragedy or any words the president can say,” said Dan Gross, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. "The bottom line is, Congress so far has failed to act because it is filled with too many craven and irresponsible politicians who are nothing more than lap dogs for the corporate gun lobby.”   Read more:
 http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/obama-react-charleston-shooting-119166.html#ixzz3di5euFAq