STOPPING THE MASS SHOOTINGS

You tell me. The crazy people are winning the battle. I did notice one little glimmer of hope in the coverage: Not one official raised a rifle over his or her head and swore “they” would only take it away from his or her cold, dead hand. Not one bragged about his or her rating with the National Rifle Association or how much the NRA had contributed to their campaigns. The buzz words “confiscate my weapon” were never mentioned. “Background check” and “assault rifle” were. Sort-of.

Our lawmakers are to blame for leaving us to be slaughtered by insane killers.

When I was a kid, the Thompson machine gun was the weapon of choice of gangsters. The enforcers of Alphonse Capone used them to kill all his competitors for the booze, gambling and prostitution business, one Valentine’s day in Chicago. J. Edgar Hoover, the first head of the FBI, ended all that by sending the Number One Public Enemy to Federal prison for Tax Evasion, where ironically, Capone died of syphilis. The Federal government made it almost impossible for anyone but a bona fide collector to own a Thompson machine gun and the federal permit to own one is prohibitive. The last one I saw had been taken by police when they arrested John Dillinger in Tucson in January, 1934 and his “Tommie gun” has been on display at headquarters here, ever since.

Want to bet I cannot buy an AR-15 or 75-A4 assault rifle capable of firing stacks of banana clips full of high velocity bullets at full-automatic mode, without any sort of background check, whatsoever. Now, that is crazy!

-– Phil Richardson, Editor