World News Korner

Possibly the best description of the Open Carry advocates that I have ever read.

Eric Liu founder of Citizen University and a former speechwriter for President Clinton, has written a rather compelling article on CNN concerning the 2nd Amendment, school shootings, and Open Carry advocates.

Here are some of the highlights:

A child was killed Friday because that child went to school.

The shooting Friday at a high school in Marysville, Washington -- just miles from my home in Seattle -- is a tragedy on two levels. First, most profoundly, two people are dead, four others wounded, and the parents, relatives, friends, teachers and classmates of the shooter and his victims have had their lives grievously changed.

But this is not the first school shooting in America this year. It is the 50th. It is the 87th since Sandy Hook, according to data compiled by the gun reform group Everytown For Safety. The other tragedy, then, is that gun violence -- in schools, in workplaces and across our communities -- has become virtually normal in America.

It should not be. It cannot be. It is not normal, in a civilized nation, to have over 30,000 gun deaths a year. It is not normal, in a civilized nation, to expect educators and parents and first responders to have plans at the ready for a shooting at their school. It is not normal, in a civilized nation, to assert that the best solution to gun violence is for more people to have more access to more guns.

Liu goes on to discuss the epidemic of gun violence in this country and how simple laws such as mandatory background checks could have a significant impact on the number of people killed each year and that a growing number of Americans are starting to see that.

However it was his description of the Open Carry advocates that really caught my eye:

When middle-aged "open-carry" activists walk into Kroger with semi-automatic rifles slung over their shoulders, they aren't exercising their rights with an ethic of responsibility. They're trying to intimidate their way to respect and esteem. They're acting out, demanding attention and rejecting curbs on their desires. That's not being a citizen. It's being a toddler.

We the people get to decide whether that's normal. Whether it's acceptable or laughable to brandish firearms in the produce aisle. Whether it's tolerable or disgraceful that we average more than one school shooting a week now. Laws like background checks can help set a tone for what's OK. But ultimately, with our family and friends and neighbors, each one of us must decide what kind of civilization we expect in the United States.

In my opinion that is not only well written but it is also spot on in identifying the fact that Americans now accept as normal behaviors, and policies, that are in fact teetering on the edge of lunacy.

The idea that we should all be armed, and that the solution to dangerous people having guns is to make sure that supposedly non-dangerous people have guns as well, is madness.

And yet thanks to the NRA and Ammosexuals that has now become a normal, and widely accepted, way to view life in America.

This has to stop, and it has to stop now.

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