In the senseless Odessa shooting yesterday, seven are dead and 19 injured, among them a 17-month-old baby. Odessa, Texas Mayor David Turner rushed home from a vacation and announced:
In a situation like this, prayer is the most important thing. We’ll get through this.
Seriously. That is what the mayor said.
Tell that to the relatives of any of the seven innocent people who died, because some nutcase went berserk during a traffic stop!
Tell that to any of the injured people!
Praying isn’t going to fix this. Making sure there are no firearms in cars driving around on our streets would fix this.
On the same day that the San Diego Union’s headline on page one was “5 Dead, 21 Injured in Shooting,” there was a small article on page 4 in the left lower column, titled: Gunfire Erupts at Football Game; 10 Wounded. A 17-year-old student started shooting at a high school football game in Mobile, Alabama. All the injured were other high school kids. Since nobody actually died this time, the article didn’t even make a headline.
Praying isn’t going to fix this. Making sure that there are no firearms in the hand of a 17-year-old high school student would fix this.
Obviously, the god all these people are praying to isn’t doing anything to protect them. Do they notice it’s not working?
And our beloved Second Amendment isn’t really protecting us, is it? The founders wrote it for these two purposes:
- a practical purpose, to protect people from thieves, bandits, Native Americans, and slave uprisings
- a political purpose, to remind the rest of the world that the United States is well-armed
I am not very terrified about thieves and bandits. And I am not worried about Native Americans and slave uprisings. And I really don’t think the rest of the world is unaware that the United States is well-armed.
The Second Amendment makes no more sense. We need sensible laws regarding guns. We need laws that actually protect our people, not from slaves, thieves, bandits and Native Americans, but from nutcases wielding guns in public places killing innocent people.