Fresno Famous

It is a failure of our leaders in the government to protect us from these mass shootings.

They seem to think that their blind commitment to the Right to Bear Arms supercedes the right of the public to be safe in our public places. At this intersection of the availability of firearms with the enraged mentally ill we saw the horror unfold in Newtown, Connecticut on December 14th, 2012.

  I have news for them: Our right to be safe in public is more important than their right to flood the country with guns and to allow those deranged people to possess those guns. 

Common sense gun control will not take away their right to protect themselves against a criminal. But, we can and should limit the availability of extreme firepower.

The belief that everyone and anyone should have access to any kind of a gun goes hand in hand with their belief that the government should stay out of providing health care. But, the mentally ill, who are difficult to treat in the best of circumstances, fall through the cracks in this Robber-Baron world where everyone is on his own and we have these tragic mass shootings.

The government does have a very important role to play at this intersection of the availability of guns with mental illness.

"As we mourn we must sound a call for our leaders to stand up and do what is right" - Captain Mark Kelly, husband of Gabby Giffords in Tucson AZ 2011.

I heard this morning on NPR that the owners of Bushmaster Firearms are selling the company, lickity-split. They don't want to be around when the families of those kids start to sue whoever they can to pay for this incompetence of public policy. That same kind of gun that was used just the other day was also used by the DC sniper. The victims families sued back then and got millions in court from the manufacturer and the seller of the gun. If we can't get some common sense legislation then, at least we have the civil courts.

Last sunday, all Jocey and I talked about was what we read in the paper and on line and saw on tv about this horrible tragedy. It's even worse than the Aurora theater shootings because of the little children.

They are wrong about allowing such easy access to firepower and a disregard to treat the mentally ill. And all because they hate the government. They have become blinded by their unreasonable, inflexible ideology and we in the public will continue to suffer this horror untill we stop letting enraged, mentally ill young men get their hands on guns. The party who used to be the party of law and order have become the party to protect heinous criminal activity.