"Forget about the future...

let's get on with the past"

The old Wild West is part of our rich heritage and history books are filled with fascinating stories of gun-slinging outlaws and the tough guys who hunted them down.





Unbeknownst to most Americans, some form of open carry is legal in approximately 43 states and the gun lobby wants you to know it.
Hence, there are a growing number of public events across the country to get the gun crowd to come out of the closet (!) in the hopes of intimidating the public into accepting their dangerous worldview.

The real world implications of the open carry crusade is chilling.

Consider:

• Sipping hot chocolate with your toddler at Starbucks while a fellow patron openly displays a gun at the table next to you;
• Attending a church service with your entire family knowing that the fellow parishioner sitting next to you has a handgun tucked in his belt; or
• Boarding a crowded bus with your newborn child with upwards of 5 other passengers openly carrying weapons.

Unless this is the kind of world you want for you and your children, Americans’ need to pick up the phone to call state and federal lawmakers to voice outrage over the gun lobby’s extremist agenda.

It's ironic that today's parents are hyper-vigilant about what their children eat, whom they hang out with and whether they have sunscreen on.

Yet, in sharp contrast, there is remarkably little awareness or concern about the 280 million guns in civilian hands in our country—many of which are carried into countless public places each day where families frequent.

Next time you take your child on an outing with you, think about how many people within earshot may soon be openly carrying a gun as you wait in line at the aquarium, shop at the local grocery store, or sit in a theater watching a movie.

Unless American's wake up to this crisis and demand that guns laws effectively address the inherent dangers associated with carrying guns in public places, the seemingly far-fetched examples of every day outings turned into repeated encounters with armed citizens will become all to real.

After all, allowing a small group of armed gun owners -- versus trained law enforcement officers -- to make potentially life and death decisions about public safety in restaurants, churches, theaters and parks is a frightening prospect.

America is being held hostage by the gun lobby's extremist agenda to flood our country with firearms as evidenced by the recent passage of legislation allowing loaded guns in National Parks. It's time we turned back the clock on this deadly trend before America's children are sitting in school with armed teachers and the gun lobby's abnormal behavior becomes the new norm.

Meanwhile, there have been eight episodes of right-wing extremist violence in four and a half months.

We haven't gone four weeks since February without some poor guy -- always with a long history of mental illness, usually with a record of military service and/or domestic violence, and invariably jacked up on a toxic cocktail of white male privilege; us-versus-them enemy seeking; fury at women, blacks and/or Jews; and a belief that the world as he knew it was ending unless he took up arms -- taking out his gun and offing innocent Americans in a suicidal bid for glory.

thanks to:
gunguys
Orcinus