Can someone explain to me the value of being able to buy
automatic assault weapons? I don’t get
it. These are guns designed for absolutely nothing except killing human
beings. So why should anyone be able to
walk into a gun store and buy one? Whose rights are we violating by not
allowing the sale of these weapons? What
exactly is the argument?
Last
weekend someone used one of these weapons to massacre 49 people. Okay, maybe if
he hadn’t been able to purchase an assault rifle he would have found another
way to act out the rage that had been building in him for so many years.
Probably that’s true. And I know that if you can’t get a gun legally, there are
plenty of choices on the street, but it seems to me removing one of the choices
can’t be a bad thing, even if it’s not the whole solution to that particular
situation. As long as people have access
to assault weapons, we are all at risk.
I am
gay, and the events of last weekend tore at my heart. To be reminded that things haven’t changed as
much as we thought they had, to know there are still people out there who hate
us and think we are the worst kind of human beings hurts deeply. To listen to
the words of a father who would rather have his son labeled an international
terrorist than gay, and to see the hideous results of that kind of thinking is
so very sad to me. I don’t think of the people who died in that club in Orlando
as my gay brothers and sisters. I think of them as my fellow human beings,
ruthlessly cut down when all they were seeking was a good time.
It wasn’t drugs or booze that
caused this. It wasn’t some far away terrorist organization. It was pure, home
grown hatred, one of the most powerful of human emotions, one that kills as
surely as any assault weapon sold.
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