In the end, nothing will change

In the wake of the bloody massacre in which 27 elementary school kids and some of their teachers were gunned down by a single mad man acting alone on December 14th, a strong voice has risen among some protesters who are demanding an end to the almost unlimited privileges granted by the Second Amendment to the perpetrators of these insane acts. It is not the first time these demands and concerns have been voiced, and there is no reason to expect that they will be more successful than similar demands that have been raised in the past.

The main obstacle, of course, is the US Congress. And it will continue to be the main obstacle until Americans themselves decide to put an end to the grip that the National Rifle Association (NRA) and its powerful gun lobby have in Washington. And, so far, Americans themselves have not joined forces to make any meaningful change. And if past history is any indication, when all has been said and done regarding the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, nothing will change until the next tragedy takes place, at which point everything will repeat itself as in a well rehearsed comedy and farce.

To put it bluntly, behind every US legislator who has sold his soul to the NRA, there is a majority of voters who voted for him and who have freely and willingly chosen him to represent them in Congress, among them many voters who in a major display of sheer hypocrisy are wailing demanding something be done to stop these insane massacres every time they take place.

Behind the trigger that murdered so many innocent children there wasn’t just a lonely gunman. Behind that trigger there were also all his accomplices who armed him, starting of course with the NRA. But the NRA, sharing its part of the blame as it most certainly does, is not the only culprit to blame. Behind that trigger there was every single US legislator who has sided with the NRA in arming these lunatics. But the NRA and the US Congress are not the only culprits. Also to blame are all those voters who keep on sending these NRA friendly Congressmen to Washington. And this makes up for a lot of accomplices. It wouldn’t be unusual that among the parents of these slain children are parents who voted to send an NRA friendly Congressman to Washington. Well, today they are paying the price, and they are paying dearly big time for their mistake.

In Mexico, an estimated 60 to 80 thousand men, women and children have died in the drug wars carried out in Mexican territory at the behest of the US Government and the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), and many if not all of those deaths whose sheer number surpasses the number of US servicemen who died in Vietnam are directly attributable to the availability of firearms in neighboring USA, some of them reaching the hands of the drug cartels themselves courtesy of the US government via the Fast and Furious fiasco. To date, not a single US government official has gone to jail for this blatantly criminal misbehavior, none of them have been held accountable, and it is most likely that none of them will ever face justice.

In a ridiculously silly defense argument for the Second Amendment, it has been said over and over that “guns don’t kill people, people do”. Yet, it is extremely hard to envision how without massive firepower at their disposal the mass murderers behind Columbine, Aurora, Virginia and Newtown could have killed so many people in such a short time. In other countries like Japan and England and Germany, such wanton acts do not occur simply because firearms are not as freely available for sale as they are in the USA. In contrast, in places such as the Middle East violence is as widespread as the availability of firearms in the hands of fundamentalists and religious lunatics.

In a travesty of the original intentions of the Founding Fathers and the US Constitution before it was done in by later amendments, the “right to bear arms” has been given not just to active members of the armed forces and policemen, that right has also been given to professional assassins, drug dealers, domestic terrorists, psychopaths, robbers, rapists, gang members and any mad man who has the money to acquire any weapon he chooses to buy.

US Congressmen now expressing their sorrow for the tragedy are no less cynical than a bartender giving his condolences to the relatives of the car crash fatalities and victims caused by a drunken driver responsible for the incident and who happened to get drunk at the same bar whose owner is now expressing his sorrow but who has no intentions whatsoever of closing his bar. The blatant disregard of the majority of US Congressmen and the NRA for human life was nowhere as evident as it was after the massacre in which one of their own, Gabby Gifford, was gunned down by Jared Loughner on January 2011, in a barrage of gunfire that claimed the lives of six persons including a sweet innocent little girl, plus 16 wounded, some of them seriously. After shedding off their crocodile tears and displaying deep concern for the victims, those US Congressmen returned to their daily business of upholding the Second Amendment, dancing to the tune of the powerful NRA lobby. And so, in the end, after one of their own was gunned down and nearly died, nothing happened, nothing changed, just as anticipated, just as expected, and everything returned to “normal”. “Normal”, that is, until the massacre that took place in a Colorado movie theatre in August 2012 (less than four months before the Connecticut massacre).

It wouldn’t have made any difference in this issue who would have won the US presidential election held this year, Romney or Obama. In their campaigns, none of them had the courage to take on the NRA and pursue a possible repeal of the Second Amendment or a radical modification of its text. And even if one of them had done so, it would have been useless with a US Congress unwilling to do its job on this issue.

Among those public officials whose lonely voices ask for a rehash of gun control laws is that of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who voicing his concerns on Sunday December 16th stated on the NBC program Meet the Press: “It’s unbelievable, and it only happens in America, and it happens again and again... We kill people in schools, we kill them in hospitals, we kill them in religious organizations, we kill them when they’re young, we kill them when they’re old, and we’ve just got to stop this. It’s time for the president, I think, to stand up and lead. This should be his number one agenda. He’s president of the United States, and if he does nothing during his second term, something like 48,000 Americans will be killed with illegal guns (in a reference to next year, 2013).” This after a tearful President Barack Obama expressed “overwhelming grief” the day of the shooting for the victims, calling on Americans to set aside politics and “take meaningful action” to prevent more tragedies of this kind. “We've endured too many of these tragedies in the past few years” Obama said, his voice cracking with emotion at times during a nationally televised appearance in the White House briefing room just hours after one of the worst shooting rampages in U.S. history, adding “Our hearts are broken today, for the parents, and grandparents, sisters and brothers of these little children and for the families of the adults who were lost, our hearts are broken for the parents of the survivors as well, for as blessed as they are to have their children home tonight, they know that their children's innocence has been torn away from them too early and there are no words that will ease their pain... They had their entire lives ahead of them — birthdays, graduations, weddings, kids of their own". Furthermore, he said that “the country will have to take meaningful action to prevent such tragedies, regardless of politics”.

Yet, talk is cheap. President Obama did not go into any specifics on what he had in mind, which is pitiful considering he is the freshly re-elected President and he is suppossed to take leadership during times such as these, just as President Roosevelt took leadership after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

It wasn’t always like this. Back in the days of the prohibition era, after the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre in which several Chicago gangsters were gunned down, this massacre was more than enough to drive the American people and Congress to repeal the 18th Amendment that established the prohibition era in the first place. They had the courage then to accept that the prohibition of the sale and consumption of alcoholic beverages was a mistake made possible by the pressures of moralistic and intolerant minorities, and they had the courage to take on that amendment and repeal it, much to the chagrin of the fundamentalists who made prohibition possible in the first place. Nearly one century later, it seems odd that whereas that Saint Valentine’s day massacre involving mafia gangsters was enough to drive Americans into action, the massacres of so many innocent people, including elementary school children, is not enough to make any kind of difference in repealing the Second Amendment. The lives of elementary school children are not as precious and valuable to the US Congressmen nowadays, so it seems, as the lives of those gangsters who were gunned down in that Saint Valentine’s day massacre.

Americans as a whole claim to have religious beliefs. One of the Ten Commandments clearly states “Thou shall not kill”. Then, why do Americans allow the NRA and their cronies to keep on defending the manufacturing and selling on a wholesale level of the very weapons that are designed very specifically for the sole intention and purpose of breaking that Commandment which, by the way, true believers take it not as a suggestion but as an order coming from way up high? So much for religious belief.

After the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in Connecticut, it has been said again that, instead of repealing the Second Amendment altogether, it would be more than enough to limit and restrict the sale of firearms only to people who are law abiding citizens and who have proven to have the intellectual capacity to know what they are doing and know how to take responsibility for their actions. Well, the gunman responsible for the massacre in the Colorado movie theatre, James Eagan Holmes, was able to get all the way to his doctoral studies, and not in any field such as zoology or geology but in neuroscience, after graduating in the top 1% of his class with a 3.949 GPA. Who on Earth could have ever foreseen that this man with a privileged mind would be more than willing and able to do what he did and throw away his life just as he did? The cold truth is that nothing except the full repeal of the Second Amendment has the potential to make any difference in this issue.

Already, less than 72 hours after those elementary school kids were murdered, defenders of the Second Amendment were responding to its detractors claiming that it was too premature to take up any kind of serious action on these claims. Dilatory tactics now, of course, and forgetfulness later. The priority is to save the day, once more, for the Second Amendment, as it has been done far too many times.

At about the same time when the first two kids from the massacre were being laid to rest, Republican Congressman from Texas Louie Gohmert, showing no remorse whatsoever for his undaunted support of the NRA and the Second Amendment, argued that the children at Sandy Hook could have been saved if murdered principal Dawn Hochsprung had been armed with a semi-automatic rifle, adding that the right to bear arms “ensures against the tyranny of the government”. This NRA-loving politician, who has already made it clear that he (as well as many of his colleagues) will oppose any attempt to overthrow the Second Amendment, if he really thinks Americans need such kind of firepower in order to use it against their own government, or better said, against a possible tyranny coming from their own government, is living in the wrong century, and he would be better off looking for a mad scientist who can send him back in time all the way to 1776 when his words could have had any kind of meaning. In the third millenium, in 2012, his arguments seem like sheer nonsense, and the worse fact is that many of his constituents believe in him. And, by the way, even if principal Dawn Hochsprung had been armed with a semi-automatic rifle as Congressman Louie Gohmert very dumbly suggests, it would have made very little difference against a lunatic armed with an assault rifle like the one shown below, a semi-automatic .332 calibre Bush Master rifle that is a civilian version of a military M16 backed up with high-capacity magazines whose crazy rampage stopped only when he heard police arriving and he committed suicide with a semi-automatic pistol:

And, by the way, the asinine claim that outlawing assault rifles and weapons such as the AK-47 are in violation of the rights of hunters to hunt in their own backyards is as stupid as it can be. No hunter who is really a hunter and is in search of a challenge and a trophy will even consider carrying with him an assault rifle with the intention of using it for his hunting game.

Let’s make a brief rehash of past history to see if the recent massacre of elementary school children at Newtown will make any difference in the future:

April 20th,1997.- The Columbine incident. Twelve students and their teacher were murdered in the Columbine High School in Colorado by two teen monsters by the name of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. After the massacre and the shock wave it carried on to public opinion, cries went out among the general population demanding an end to the Second Amendment. The NRA and the US Congressmen reacted quickly and accordingly. And in the end, the Second Amendment was not changed and much less repealed, and everything returned to “normal”. In the end, nothing changed, nothing ever does.

March 21st, 2005.- Ten people massacred in Red Lake, Minnessotta. After the massacre and the shock wave it carried on to public opinion, cries went out yet again among the general population demanding an end to the Second Amendment. The NRA and the US Congressmen reacted quickly and accordingly. And in the end, the Second Amendment was not changed and much less repealed, and everything returned to “normal”. In the end, nothing changed, nothing ever does.

April 16th, 2007.- At least 30 students at Virginia Tech were murdered by a single heavily armed man, Cho Seung-Hui. After the massacre and the shock wave it carried on to public opinion, cries went out yet again among the general population demanding an end to the Second Amendment. The NRA and the US Congressmen reacted quickly and accordingly. And in the end, the Second Amendment was not changed and much less repealed, and everything returned to “normal”. In the end, nothing changed, nothing ever does.

December 5th, 2007.- Nine people massacred in Omaha, Nebraska. After the massacre and the shock wave it carried on to public opinion, cries went out yet again among the general population demanding an end to the Second Amendment. The NRA and the US Congressmen reacted quickly and accordingly. And in the end, the Second Amendment was not changed and much less repealed, and everything returned to “normal”. In the end, nothing changed, nothing ever does.

February 14th, 2008.- 7 people massacred in Dekalb, Illinois. After the massacre and the shock wave it carried on to public opinion, cries went out yet again among the general population demanding an end to the Second Amendment. The NRA and the US Congressmen reacted quickly and accordingly. And in the end, the Second Amendment was not changed and much less repealed, and everything returned to “normal”. In the end, nothing changed, nothing ever does.

December 24th, 2008.- On Christmas eve, ten people were massacred in Los Angeles, California. After the massacre and the shock wave it carried on to public opinion, cries went out yet again among the general population demanding an end to the Second Amendment. The NRA and the US Congressmen reacted quickly and accordingly. And in the end, the Second Amendment was not changed and much less repealed, and everything returned to “normal”. In the end, nothing changed, nothing ever does.

April 3, 2009.- 13 people massacred in Binghamton, New York. After the massacre and the shock wave it carried on to public opinion, cries went out yet again among the general population demanding an end to the Second Amendment. The NRA and the US Congressmen reacted quickly and accordingly. And in the end, the Second Amendment was not changed and much less repealed, and everything returned to “normal”. In the end, nothing changed, nothing ever does.

January 20th, 2010.- Eight people killed in a massacre that took place in Appomatox, Virginia. After the massacre and the shock wave it carried on to public opinion, cries went out yet again among the general population demanding an end to the Second Amendment. The NRA and the US Congressmen reacted quickly and accordingly. And in the end, the Second Amendment was not changed and much less repealed, and everything returned to “normal”. In the end, nothing changed, nothing ever does.

August 3, 2010.- Nine people killed in a massacre that took place in Manchester, Connecticut. After the massacre and the shock wave it carried on to public opinion, cries went out yet again among the general population demanding an end to the Second Amendment. The NRA and the US Congressmen reacted quickly and accordingly. And in the end, the Second Amendment was not changed and much less repealed, and everything returned to “normal”. In the end, nothing changed, nothing ever does.

May, 2011.- Three persons murdered in a parking lot of San Jose State University in California. Two other students later found dead are presumed to be the authors of the murders. After these killings and the shock wave it carried on to public opinion, cries went out yet again among the general population demanding an end to the Second Amendment. The NRA and the US Congressmen reacted quickly and accordingly. And in the end, the Second Amendment was not changed and much less repealed, and everything returned to “normal”. In the end, nothing changed, nothing ever does.

October 12, 2011.- Eight people killed in a massacre that took place in Seal Beach, California. After the massacre and the shock wave it carried on to public opinion, cries went out yet again among the general population demanding an end to the Second Amendment. The NRA and the US Congressmen reacted quickly and accordingly. And in the end, the Second Amendment was not changed and much less repealed, and everything returned to “normal”. In the end, nothing changed, nothing ever does.

April 2, 2012.- Seven people massacred in Oakland, California. After the massacre and the shock wave it carried on to public opinion, cries went out yet again among the general population demanding an end to the Second Amendment. The NRA and the US Congressmen reacted quickly and accordingly. And in the end, the Second Amendment was not changed and much less repealed, and everything returned to “normal”. In the end, nothing changed, nothing ever does.

February, 2012.- Three students died and six were left wounded by another fellow student in Ohio. After the massacre and the shock wave it carried on to public opinion, cries went out yet again among the general population demanding an end to the Second Amendment. The NRA and the US Congressmen reacted quickly and accordingly. And in the end, the Second Amendment was not changed and much less repealed, and everything returned to “normal”. In the end, nothing changed, nothing ever does.

July 20th, 2012.- Twelve persons massacred inside a movie theatre in Aurora, Colorado. After these senseless killings and the shock wave it carried on to public opinion, cries went out yet again among the general population demanding an end to the Second Amendment. The NRA and the US Congressmen reacted quickly and accordingly. And in the end, the Second Amendment was not changed and much less repealed, and everything returned to “normal”. In the end, nothing changed, nothing ever does.

August 5th, 2012.- Attacks at the Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, with the followers most likely mistaken to be followers of Islam. Seven people killed. After the massacre and the shock wave it carried on to public opinion, cries went out yet again among the general population demanding an end to the Second Amendment. The NRA and the US Congressmen reacted quickly and accordingly. And in the end, the Second Amendment was not changed and much less repealed, and everything returned to “normal”. In the end, nothing changed, nothing ever does.

To top it all and just before the end of deadly 2012, on Christmas eve, the very same day in which the last victims of the Sandy Hook massacre were laid to rest and barely ten days after that massacre took place, in Webster (New York) two courageous firefighters going by the names of Tomasz Kaczowka (19) and Mike Chiapperini (43) were murdered in cold blood and two more were seriously wounded in an ambush set up by a deranged man called William Spengler who had served 17 years of prision time for killing his grandmother with a hammer on 1980, leaving a killing note behind him saying he was planning to “do what I like doing best - killing people.” Amen, could have been added by the NRA, just for the record. As a convicted criminal, the New York assasin was not allowed to own weapons, yet he had no problems whatsover in getting his hands on deadly weapons. The same goes for Adam Lanza, the Sandy Hook killer, whose own mother brought home the very weapons he used to carry out the bloody rampage against innocent children, separate incidents which completely prove the point that simply restricting arms sales to persons with no criminal record or persons deemed mentally competent by a mental health official is useless, for they can get the deadly weaponry with the help of anyone who lives were they live. Michael Chiapperini was named “Firefighter of the Year” just two weeks before he was gunned down.

Besides those incidents, there have been many other fatalities of well-known personalities, including John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and John Lennon, just to name a few. Every time these murders occur, cries go out among the general population demanding an end to the Second Amendment. And, as usual, the NRA and the US Congress react quickly and accordingly. And in the end, the Second Amendment is not changed, much less repealed, and everything returns to “normal”. In the end, nothing changes, nothing ever does.

The American people, as a whole (with a few exceptions) just don’t get it. Nothing seems to be enough to make them put an end to the Second Amendment and the NRA and the Congressmen who stand by them.

Offering no apologies whatsoever to the victims of the Sandy Hook massacre, and acting like the Grinch who stole Christmas, three days before X-mas eve a defiant NRA CEO president and spokesman, Wayne LaPierre, instead of showing some genuine remorse and yielding to some of the demands to curb arm sales and establish stricter gun controls, he asked in a news conference on December 21st for the presence of yet more arms at all the schools in the USA, by having armed guards in every school (the NRA did not offer to pay the salary of any of them), saying that school shootings could be prevented by employing armed guards at schools. This sheer display of imbecility missed the fact (deliberately, no doubt) that in the Columbine massacre there was an armed officer, Sheriff's Deputy Neil Gardner, on duty the morning Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold entered the school and murdered 12 of their classmates and a teacher. And Virginia Tech, which remains the site of the deadliest school shooting in U.S. history, had what amounted to a SWAT team on campus. According to the governor’s report on the 2007 shootings that left 32 people dead and 17 wounded, the Virginia Tech police department, a fully accredited police force, has an emergency response team. On April 16, 2007, 34 armed officers were on duty. Neither Gardner at Columbine High School, nor the Virginia Tech Police force, were able to prevent the events of two of the worst mass gun murders ever to occur in the U.S, LaPierre’s ridiculous plan ignored the fact there are over 70 million individuals to protect.  Not surprisingly, there was no mention of limiting gun sales in the U.S. or background checks. A country with 300 million privately owned guns needs more LaPierre argued. But then, what weapon has the NRA ever been against?  In a speech with a wealth of stupid lines we can quote from Wayne LaPierre, here are ten that deserve some consideration (here I will take some lines from Lauren Victoria Burke):

1. The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.

In the movies, that is.  This “Death Wish 2” fantasy scenario where a hero with a gun jumps up and saves everyone has never been documented in real life during a shooting massacre.  Had LaPierre taken questions, which of course he didn’t, surely someone would have asked him to give a “hero with a gun” example.  Interestingly, the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is that bad guy putting the gun to his head.

2. What if when Adam Lanza started shooting his way in the Sandy Hook Elementary School last Friday, he’d been confronted by qualified armed security?.

In the 62 mass-murder cases over 30 years examined recently by the magazine Mother Jones, not one was stopped by an armed civilian. LaPierre forgets (or chose to forget) that there were “qualified armed security guards”  at Columbine High School as two killers shot 32 people and killed 13.  What makes him believe that, in a real life situation, school personnel will be able to stop a killed with the type of semi-auto assault rifle that LaPierre has spent his life fighting so hard to make legal in the U.S?

3. There exists in this country, sadly, a callous, corrupt and corrupting shadow industry that sells and sows violence against its own people. Through vicious, violent video games.

Shadow industry? Were video games a secret underground force until LaPierre discovered them the morning he gave his dumb NRA speech in washington? The video game industry is targeted as the real problem by LaPierre but the private ownership of over 300,000,000 firearms — including weapons of war — isn’t.

4. Politicians pass laws for gun-free school zones, they issue press releases bragging about them … in doing so they tell every insane killer in America that schools are the safest place to inflict maximum mayhem.

This was a particularly interesting point when you consider that many shootings occur someplace other than schools. When 70 people were shot at a movie theatre in Colorado was it due to a “gun safe” movie theater law?

5. I call on Congress today to act immediately, to appropriate whatever is necessary to put armed police officers in every school.

It’s interesting to hear a Republican call for Congress to “act immediately” on more funding for schools… but not for education related needs — for armed guards.  There are over 100,000 public schools in the U.S., over 4,000 colleges and over 30,000 private schools.  LaPierre never put a budget number on his idea and, of course, took no questions.  That alone acknowledges that his “plan” can’t hold up to basic inquiries.

6. …we need to have every single school in America immediately deploy a protection program proven to work — and by that I mean armed security…. The NRA is going to bring all of its knowledge, dedication and resources to develop a model National School Shield Emergency Response Program for every school that wants it.

No it’s not. They’ll bring the same dedication to owning politicians and funding campaigns they’ve always brought in the past.  ”Every single school,” said LaPierre.  And there are over 70 million people enrolled in school over age 3 in the U.S. — the NRA will have to bring more than “knowledge and dedication” to protect that many people from the guns they fight to get into circulation on behalf of gun manufacturers.

7. Five years ago, after the Virginia Tech tragedy, when I said we should put armed security in every school, the media called me crazy.

Perhaps there were only 9 stupid statements made during LaPierre's news conference.

8. We can’t wait for the next unspeakable crime to happen before we act. We can’t lose precious time debating legislation that won’t work.

A member of Congress being shot in the head and killing 6 others by a man with a 32 round magazine didn’t move the NRA? Thirty-two shot dead at Virginia Tech in 2007 wasn’t unspeakable enough?

9. For the sake of the safety of every child in America, I call on every parent, every teacher, every school administrator and every law enforcement officer in this country to join us in the National School Shield Program.

He’d better call on more people than that.  There are more than 70 million people presently attending school in the United States.  Even if there was an armed guard at every school as LaPierre’s fantasy vision calls for, it’s ridiculous to assume they could protect everyone at every educational location.

10. We care about the President, so we protect him with armed Secret Service agents. Members of Congress work in offices surrounded by armed Capitol Police officers.

The President doesn’t have Secret Service just because we “care.”  The Secret Service was created in 1865 by President Lincoln to protect American currency from counterfeiting.  After President McKinley was shot to death in 1901, Congress moved the Secret Service into the Presidential protection arena.  There was a specific threat followed by specific action.  LaPierre’s logic dictates that everyone has the right to an armed guard and that every school is in need of one. Can every person have their own armed guard?  Who don’t we care about and who doesn’t deserve one?

Mr. LaPierre looked wild-eyed at times as he said the killing was the fault of the news media, songwriters and singers and the people who listen to them, as well as movie and TV scriptwriters and the people who watch their work, advocates of gun control, video game makers and video game players. His solution to the proliferation of guns including semiautomatic rifles designed to kill people as quickly as possible, is to put more guns in more places. Mr. LaPierre would put a police officer in every school and compel teachers and principals to become armed guards. He demands volunteer and professional firefighters, who already risk their lives every day, to be charged with thwarting an assault by a deranged murderer. The same applies to paramedics, security guards, veterans, retired police officers. This in line with his movie-clip quotation “the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun”. It is hard to imagine trying to turn all the principals and all the teachers in the USA who care for the kids of America every day into an armed mob.

Assuming that throughout the entire USA school officials are dumb enough to implement Mr. LaPierre’s insane proposals of having armed guards in every shool:

besides arming the principals and the teachers themselves, and since in the long run that by itself would not be enough, thereafter walk-through metal detectors would have to be required and installed at the entrance of every single school:

and, of course, razor-sharp barbed wire fences surrounding each school would also be required:

perhaps with watch towers housing more armed guards for added security:

Poor kids!

These remedies are tantamount to turning every school into the equivalent of a jail or concentration camp. Can this be called liberty? Quite the contrary. The USA would turn itself into the only nation on Earth who has armed guards and teachers roaming around every school. Not even some of the most autocratic regimes in History (and then not even in times of war) did they have armed guards and fully armed teachers roaming around every elementary school. The Second Amendment, in its original text, says: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed”. What free State, when the schools in the USA are on the verge of being turned into the equivalent of jailhouses? What free State, when everyone is at the mercy of any lunatic seeking posthumous fame? What free State, when an organization as vile as the NRA is running the show? Besides, what other purpose can a Militia have on 2012, 236 years after Independence was proclaimed from Great Britain, except to overthrow the US government? The Wayne LaPierre solution, the NRA solution, is to turn a free State into what amounts to a police State. It is an erosion of the very liberties for which many of the early colonists fought for and died.

Let’s be clear on one thing: civilians bristling with guns, rifles and assault rifles to prevent the “next Newtown” must be considered not as “a well regulated Militia” but as an armed mob, even with the kind of training offered up by Mr. LaPierre. Any town officials or school principals taking up the NRA on that offer perhaps should be considered “armed and dangerous” and perhaps should even be fired, .

At least Mr. LaPierre proved one point, and he proved it very clearly. It is pointless and useless trying to argue with the NRA; it is a waste of time. Perhaps even if half of all the kids in the USA were massacred with assault rifles (including Mr. LaPierre’s very own) the NRA would not budge. Of course, neither will the corrupt politicians and Congressmen who support the NRA under any circumstance however dumb; the only message they will ever undertand is being removed from public office by the voters in a show of force throught the ballots to prove them and the NRA that an angry electorate can also destroy political careers. So far, this hasn’t happened, and the NRA and its stooges in Congress cannot take all the blame for it, a good share of the blame falls upon the shoulders of the American society for allowing these human dregs to get their way every time a new tragedy happens and letting them have the upper hand at the end.

It is not an issue of Americans being held hostage by the NRA. Yes, the NRA has built this fantastic legend that it has the power to destroy political careers, and rejoices in most Americans believing this overblown legend, but if it has acquired such a vast power it is solely because Americans themselves have allowed this to happen. This thing has been going on and on because they have allowed it. Only they can put an end to it, and the brakes can be applied the very moment they start denying their votes to all those Second Amendment loving Congressmen. But, are they willing to do so?

After the Sandy Hook massacre, Shannon Watts, a stay-at-home mother of five from Zionsville, Indianapolis, founded One Million Moms for Gun Control, saying “ hey are about to see a tsunami of 84 million angry moms coming out at them. Angry moms like they have never seen before. We are going to do for gun control what Mothers Against Drunk Driving did for drunk drivers”, adding that Congress has been running scared of the NRA, “but the NRA only has 4 million members. Ask them in four weeks who they’re more scared of, the NRA or a mom? It’s going to be the mom”.

Really?

Perhaps Mrs. Shannon Wats should have read an editorial published by a noted hispanic reporter and columnist from Univision who goes by the name of Jorge Ramos, entitled “Why I don’t believe them”. In his editorial published on Christmas day 2012 both inside and outside the USA, he wrote:  “The worst of all is that, soon, another massacre will happen again in the USA. It is foretold. I wrote this five months ago, after the killings in a movie cinema in Aurora, Colorado, where 12 persons died. It was not necessary to be a witch doctor or a seer to foretell this. All of the conditions were in place for another massacre: unlimited access to arms and a Congress fearful of imposing new restrictions to their sale. And it happened: 27 persons were murdered in a school in Newtown, Connecticut, including 20 children. I don’t believe politicians when they say they will impose limits on arms sales. They always say the same thing after a massacre and they end up doing nothing. After the killing of 15 persons in Columbine High School, in Colorado, in 1999, they ended up doing nothing. Neither did they do anything after the killing of 32 at Virginia Tech University. And now, after the killing of twenty children, they say they will do something about it but they have zero credibility. That is why I don’t believe them. The reality is that we have a fearful Congress. Most of them are afraid of proposing new laws which limit arms sales. Why? Because they would go against the National Rifle Association (NRA) and the millions of dollars this powerful organization could spend against them in the next elections. As Illinois representative, Luis Gutierrez, commented to me, to change the current laws many Congressmen are needed willing to risk and lose their seats in Congress. And, in truth, I don’t know many such Congressmen. This is the reality that must be changed. In no other country in the world are there as many massacres in schools as in the USA. In this nation there is, approximately, a firearm for each one of its more than 300 million inhabitants. One out of every three homes has a pistol or a rifle. It is easier to get a firearm to kill than to get a medicine without a prescription. The rifle used by the gunman is very similar to the one used by US troops in the wars of Irak and Afghanistan. Having a rifle of this caliber can only have one purpose: kill human beings. I have never heard of a hunter who goes out in search of deer with rifles that shoot a barrage of bullets with only pressing the trigger once. It is a false argument to say that with more firearms we are more secure. Japan has demonstrated that with less firearms there are less killings. There the citizens, with very few exceptions, are forbidden to bear firearms. After a massacre such as this one, they always end up saying that the culprit was “crazy”. But the difference in the USA is that these “crazy men”, assuming they really are, have unlimited access to firearms. Without firearms, the problems and personal vendettas of Adam Lanza would not have culminated in a massive killing. In April 2007 I travelled to Blacksburg to cover the killing of 32 persons at Virginia Tech. On that occassion, it surprissed me how in a moment you can be taking a class in German or hydrology and, on the next one, you are dead. A little bit later I wrote that it was “insane that a demented such as Cho Seung Hui can easily buy assault weapons in the USA”. And I concluded with pessimism: “Nothing is going to change”. Unfortunately, I was right five years ago. The massacres have repeated again and again. And now we are awaiting the next one. Soon. This is why I don’t believe American politicians when they say that now is the time to do something to avoid more massacres like the one in Newtown. True, the USA is undergoing a mourning similar to the one after the terrorists acts carried out on September 11th 2001. There is that terrible sensation that anyone of us could have been the father or mother of anyone of those 20 kids murdered. But I fear I must conclude with the same pessimism as before: nothing is going to change and, once again, we are only waiting for the next massacre to take place. It is just a matter of knowing when and where.”

So, someone murdered twenty elementary school kids in a matter of minutes. So what? It’s the price that must be paid for that sacrosanct “right to bear arms”. Someone murdered the composer of “Imagine”. So what? It’s the price that must be paid for that sacrosanct “right to bear arms”. So someone murdered many moviegoers in Colorado. So what? It’s the price that must be paid for that sacrosanct “right to bear arms”. The NRA has 4 million members, and yet there are 84 million mothers in America. So what? The NRA has already proven in the past that to a majority of US Congressman every single NRA supporter counts much more than the feeble votes that can be mustered by 84 millions moms plus those of their spouses (including the moms and dads of all the kids studying at Newtown who are still alive).

And, as bad as things are right now, they can get much worse in the future. We can turn the hourglass and wait as the sand begins to run out until the next massacre which will most certainly (and regretfully) take place and which will not be the last but only the first in the next ones to follow. But in the usual nonchalant attitude, let them all die, let the entire nation go into shock again and again and again (and it will!), for all that pain and anguish are mere trivia and insignificance when compared to the “right to bear arms” which carries with it implicitly a right to kill on a wholescale level. Not amazingly, there are sociologists and commentators not just in the USA but in other countries who are convinced that the US society is getting exactly what it deserves, for its unwillingness to send the NRA to the History books as bad remembrance. In the end, and regarding this issue, nothing ever changes, nothing ever does. And most likely, nothing will, if the past has any significance. The American society hasn’t assimilated the true meaning of the message of Santayana: “Those who do not learn from History are doomed to repeat it”.

If the NRA and its loyal Congressmen get their way yet again as they most likely will, the international repercussions of the Second Amendment could come back to strike the American society in unexpected ways. In Russia, the Russian Senate (Duma) approved unanimously a strict law which forbids the adoption of Russian children by US couples, the so-called “Dima Yakovlev law”, this in reference to the Russian two-year-old baby boy whose adoptive father in the USA was guilty of criminal neglect after his adoptive Russian baby died when he forgot the kid in the car leaving him to die after more than nine hours under a scorching heat, and eventhough he could have been sentenced to ten years in jail he was proclaimed innocent by the US judicial system, which angered the Russians even more. Now, with the senseless killings at Sandy Hook Elementary, the Russians will be more than certain that they are doing the right thing and certain that allowing Russian kids and babies to be given up for adoption to US prospective couples is something which can be considered completely crazy. Indeed, other countries in Europe, Asia and Latin America may soon follow the Russian example. For the time being, the agencies of US adoption agencies in Russia are being forced to shut down and driven out of business. Very certainly, the USA is proving with its actions that it does not deserve the custody of any Russian children, nor any children from outside the USA for that matter. As a matter of fact, the USA perhaps does not even deserve her own children, to put it bluntly.

It is important not to forget the innocent victims of the Second Amendment, the NRA and the Congressmen who do their very best to keep this kind of insanity going on. The victims should never be forgotten, even if in the end nothing changes and they died in vain. Below are the snapshots of Olivia Rose Engel, Jessica Rekos, Benjamin Wheeler, Emilie Alice Parker and Grace McDonnell. May they all rest in peace, and as for the NRA and their accomplices in Congress, perhaps they should bear in mind that inevitably they may end up facing a higher authority to respond for their actions.