nuclear-news

National Rifle Association puts gun industry profits ahead of children’s lives

There are more than twenty mass shootings every year in America and over a hundred people are shot every day…but the NRA tells us that we can’t do something about guns?….
Increasingly, Americans are recognizing the blood-soaked gun lobby as the pariahs they are, who have done far more damage to America than Osama bin Laden ever dreamed of.

NRA Has More Blood on Its Hands Than al-Qaeda: What Do We Do?, TruthOut,, 18 December 2012  By Thom Hartmann and Sam Sacks,   In the coming weeks, we’ll find out just how far our elected lawmakers are willing to go to protect our children from future gun massacres.
But we already know how far our lawmakers are willing to go to protect us from Middle Eastern terrorists – a group that has killed nothing close to the number of Americans who die every day because of the NRA.
If al-Qaeda were to strike the United States in the last remaining weeks of 2012 and kill as many Americans as three 9/11s, the carnage still wouldn’t compare to what guns do to Americans every single year.
So far in 2012, more than 9,000 Americans have died by way of the gun; almost a hundred thousand were shot. Just this last Saturday alone, 190 people were shot in America. And in Newtown, Connecticut, twenty first graders are dead – gunned down by an assault rifle borrowed from a gun-nut mom.
It’s interesting – and instructive – to compare our national response
to Muslim religious extremist killers, versus our response to largely
white Christian extremist killers.  …..
When the danger is terrorism, our policymakers respond quickly, with
little concern about either cost or civil liberties. But with our
national epidemic of gun violence, it’s an entirely different story.
After 13 people were murdered in Columbine in 1999, not a single thing
was done to address gun safety. Nothing was done after the DC sniper
killed 10 people in 2002. Nothing after a Brookfield, Wisconsin man
killed seven people during a church service in 2005. Nothing after a
truck driver killed five school girls in Pennsylvania in 2006. Nothing
in 2007 after 32 people were gunned down at Virginia Tech University.
Years passed, more mass shooting followed, and, still, no actions were
taken. Then in 2011, a deranged man with very expensive assault
weapons killed six people in Tucson and shot Congresswoman Gabby
Giffords through the brain. Despite the attack being so close to home
for Members of Congress, still no action was taken on gun safety.
Just like no action was taken after the Aurora, Colorado theatre
shooting this year that killed 12 people. And nothing was done after
the Sikh temple massacre in Oak Creek, Wisconsin this year that killed
six people.
Had any one of these mass shootings been done by al-Qaeda and called
terrorism, our national response would have been swift and decisive.
Instead, we got bupkis.
Which is, in part, because al-Qaeda didn’t make the smart investment
that Colt and Remington did and get the NRA to lobby for them. Just
this year alone, the NRA has spent nearly $19 million, much of it from
weapons manufacturers, here in DC and across America to make sure that
the gun industry can continue to make huge profits. Those investments
keep in place the sale of assault weapons like the Bushmaster, which
was used last Friday to murder 20 children. Those investments keep in
place the sale of high capacity clips, like the ones believed used
last Friday to murder 20 children. Those investments keep in place
background check loopholes, which put guns into the hands of criminals
and the mentally ill, and put in place numerous limitations on our
government’s ability to track guns or their users.
Ironically, the NRA’s investments even keep in place the right of
terrorists to buy guns. In 2011, the NRA beat back a gun control
measure that would have prevented those on the FBI’s terror watch list
from purchasing a gun. So in the future, should al-Qaeda carry out the
next mass shooting in America, they may well have been able to do so
because of the efforts of the NRA. Certainly the narco-terrorists on
our southern border are grateful to the NRA. ….
there’s enormous money to be made in the manufacture and sale of
firearms. Yet, there’s very little money to be made in the restriction
of firearms. Which may help explain why the weapons industry trade
group the NRA works so hard to knock down gun control laws.
The NRA’s Second Amendment “freedom” argument is just a cover for the
real reason why they don’t want Americans to enjoy freedom from gun
nuts. There are millions in profits to be made keeping open the flow
of deadly weapons, no matter how many kids’ lives are put at risk.
Let’s tell the truth. The NRA’s hands are far bloodier than al-Qaeda’s….
There are more than twenty mass shootings every year in America and over a hundred people are shot every day…but the NRA tells us that we can’t do something about guns?….
Increasingly, Americans are recognizing the blood-soaked gun lobby as the pariahs they are, who have done far more damage to America than Osama bin Laden ever dreamed of.
http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/13415-nra-has-more-blood-on-its-hands-than-al-qaeda-what-do-we-do

December 19, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, weapons and war