Gun control

The events in Connecticut seem to have caught the attention of just about everyone.  For obvious reasons, when one person kills so many others, it is news.  But when one or two here and there are murdered in your city, they hardly merit a mention, except maybe for a quick blurb on the news.  The daily carnage wrought by firearms is staggering, but it gets lost in the daily grind.

This one in Connecticut is particularly horrible, as the killer targeted children in an elementary school.  Why?  We don't know yet.  How?  He broke into a locked school with several weapons and methodically gunned down the kids, putting at least two bullets in each one.  

The parents are in shock.  

The town is in shock.

Even the media seems to be in shock.

But one element of our society seems to not be in shock:  the religious wackos.

Behold Mike Huckabee, the ex-Governor of Arkansas, an ordained Baptist Minister who ran for President in 2008.  Mr. Huckabee claimed that we should not be surprised at this violence, as we have "systematically removed God from our schools".  

Mike, you're a real prick.

#1 - the comment is very insensitive to all of the parents who just lost a child in the massacre.

#2 - you're an idiot if you really think that if we'd just put "God" back in schools that this type of thing would cease to happen.  But this is the kind of simplistic thinking you get from brainwashed religious retards.

Tell me, Mike, did we also remove God from our churches?  After all, priests have been molesting and RAPING children in churches for EONS now.  I don't think you can find a place where God is more "present" than in a church, and that didn't protect many children from depraved priests, now did it?

This issue is about the lack of access to mental health facilities and the easy access to firearms.   Almost every state in the nation has been cutting back on funding for mental health facilities.  Several years ago, my home state of Texas shut down all of its state-funded mental health clinics and just dumped the patients that were there on the streets of Houston, San Antonio, Dallas and Austin.  Real responsible government, huh? 
  

There is still a stigma around mental illness.  It is ridiculed and mocked, as if it's a sign of laziness or worse, atheism.  If you ask me, all religious believers are exhibiting a form of mental illness, but it's such a pervasive one that it is considered normal.  Now THAT is fucked-up.

No doubt soon we will hear from Fred Phelps, that awesome leader of the Westboro Baptist Church that pickets funerals of dead soldiers with signs that read things like, "God hates fags" or "This is God's punishment for tolerating homosexuality!"  

Did you see the Facebook post from ex-Saturday Night Live cast member and ex-human Victoria Jackson?  She likened the Connecticut massacre to the abortion procedure and said, "When you forget the Ten Commandments, people, this is what you get".  Pure, unadulterated ignorance.  You want to see an example of mental illness?  Look up Victoria Jackson.

So today we hear stories about an Indiana man who was arrested for threatening a local school who just happened to have 47 weapons and untold ammunition hidden in his house;  

another story about three shot and wounded in an Alabama hospital before police killed him;

another guy in a California mall parking lot shooting 50 rounds, and amazingly, no one was injured;

two dead in a murder-suicide at a Las Vegas hotel;

a nut in North Carolina was arrested for shooting and killing his wife and mother-in-law;

and this is just from TODAY!!

What to do?  One thing people have been talking about for years now is getting money out of politics.  The National Rifle Association (NRA) is probably the most powerful lobby group in Washington.  Politicians simply cower  from the NRA, so much so that no one even wants to discuss gun control.  Remove big money from politics and you remove a lot of power from the NRA.

Another thing is to pass another assault weapons ban.  Hunting is fine, but no hunter needs an assault rifle or even a semi-automatic weapon.  

A third thing would be to seriously clamp down on all of the traveling gun shows in this country.  Just yesterday I saw a mobile sign announcing a "high-caliber gun show" in downtown Houston.  Seriously?  Can I get a bazooka too?  Why not?!?!  There is a gun show almost every week in Houston.  

Finally, start putting money back into mental health facilities coast-to-coast and realize that mental illness is a serious problem.

I certainly don't have all the answers, but I can guarantee you that "putting God back in our schools" is not going to solve a goddamn thing.