AN ANNIVERSARY OF SORTS FOR THIS BLOG.

Although I didn’t date the first few blogs, I began to publish them on an irregular bases beginning in 1999.

The one concern that has troubled me most greatly since then is the insistent need for gun control and the obvious lack of backbone of our lawmakers to turn down the money flowing from the National Rifle Association.

I began to speak out about gun control; school shootings and mass murder following the Columbine School massacre in April of 1999. This was difficult for me to do. I’ve been a gun owner and avid hunter for 80 years. It was the only “sport” in which I excelled and loved to do. 

Then came the horrific killing of six people including nine-year old Christina Taylor-Green and 63-year-old Federal Judge John Roll and the wounding of 18 others by a deranged young man on January 8, 2011 at a shopping center in Tucson, one of whom at the time was U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords, now the wife of astronaut and politician Mark Kelly. 

Gabbies’ grandfather and father were longtime customers of mine, (purchasers of broadcast advertising) going back several decades, and I was outside of my home and heard the commotion at a shopping center barely a mile away, when the shooting took place.

My point is, it has been 20 years since Columbine and maybe our lawmakers are finally considering doing something about assault rifles and super-size ammo clips. Perhaps, we pray, with a greater sense of haste and determination than the last 20 years!

 -Phil Richardson, Storyteller and Observer of the Human Condition.