There Is No Greater Injustice Than Supporting Gun 'Rights' Over Children’s Lives

I’m a Texan. I can fire a rifle. I’ve attended rattlesnake roundups as a child. I’ve spit buckshot out while eating quail my uncle shot. You don’t want to mess with me.

Single-shot rifles aren’t ARs. They don’t shoot multiple rounds into the soft, tiny bodies of children who are doing nothing more sinister than sitting in their school classrooms trying to learn.

I will not argue with gun rights advocates here or anywhere. This escalation of fire-power was never about the right for the American populace to arm themselves against threats of insurgency or autocratic government overreach nor against attacks against us on our shores by foreign powers.

This has always been about money, greed, and power. To the NRA leaders and the bubbas, military-style weapons in the hands of Americans are power. The power of overkill. The power to disregard others’ safety, including that of school children. The power to wave a big gun around to substitute for other inadequacies.

To the politicians who won’t pass logical and reasonable gun laws, it is directly about money and therefore power. The money donated to their campaigns by the NRA, and gun lobbies such as The NSSF, National Shooting Sports Foundation, and SAAMI, who lobbies for ammunition makers, results in more power for both the politicians, the NRA, and the gun and ammunition manufacturers. It’s a never-ending circle jerk.

The NRA, the manufacturers of guns and ammunition, the chain stores, legal sellers at gun conventions, and those who sell ARs and other semi-automatics out of trunks of cars make money, money, and more money.

According to Forbes,

Last year, the firearms industry sold about six guns for every 100 Americans.

Sales topped 2.2 million in January 2021 and neared 2.2 million in March, the two busiest months last year.

Greed drives gun sales just as it drives all sales. The bigger and better the gun, the more money made. Why settle for only militaries here and around the world as your target market, when you can sell the same firepower to civilians to shoot rats and groundhogs in their backyards? Or to take into an elementary school to shoot innocent children.

The mass shooting, or massacre, in Uvalde, Texas this week will be tougher for the gun apologists to cover over with platitudes and excuses. The 18-year-old who shot and killed 19 children and three adults had no history of mental illness.

They can’t blame this on those of us in the mental health field who “didn’t catch it or do something about it sooner.” As if that were possible. We might see things as possibilities based on predisposition, but our legal options are limited. We definitely do have duties to warn, and we do.

He’d never been in trouble with the law or arrested. They can’t say he’s “just one bad apple.”

What they will say is that he was perfectly within his legal “right” to purchase the firepower that took out those children and teachers. At 18, he was of legal age. The guns he purchased were legal. The ammunition he bought was legal. What they were not, was necessary.

Why does an 18-year-old need two semi-automatic AR-15 rifles and 375 rounds of ammunition? He doesn’t. Why don’t our laws reflect that?

Oh, that’s right. Money, greed, and power. Sacrificing children is the price we are all paying for some to get rich, stay in office, simply feel powerful, or all three.

They certainly have more power than defenseless children doing something as all-American and common-place as attending school, thinking about getting home to mom and dad, a snack, and some cartoons or playtime. 19 of those precious ones are now in the morgue.

There is no justice here.

. . .

To call your Senators and Representatives, download the App 5 Calls for iPhone or Android. Join and/or donate to Everytown to push for better gun control. Click here to learn how to divest from companies that manufacture guns and ammunition.

—

This post was previously published on An Injustice!

***

Join The Good Men Project as a Premium Member today.

All Premium Members get to view The Good Men Project with NO ADS.

A $50 annual membership gives you an all access pass. You can be a part of every call, group, class and community.
A $25 annual membership gives you access to one class, one Social Interest group and our online communities.
A $12 annual membership gives you access to our Friday calls with the publisher, our online community.