Whatever Power

...you need a bullet like a hole in the head...
                         Put Out the Fire - Queen

         

            Last weekend was the six month anniversary of the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton, Connecticut.  I won’t go into the details; we all know them and if you don’t, consider yourself fortunate.  A couple of days later President Obama said he would use "whatever power this office holds" to prevent similar tragedies in the future.  At this six month point what has been done?  An assault weapons ban went nowhere, a bill to expand background checks died in the Senate, and the gun control bill that did pass in New York 5 months ago has been challenged in court and will likely be repealed.  I guess the power that the Office of the President holds amounts to very little.

            You stand over here and way over there a can flips off a fence post or a tight grouping of holes appear in the center of a target.  Shooting guns is fun, but so is driving a car 100MPH through a shopping mall – the Blues Brothers proved that –  that doesn’t mean we should do it. 

             The power of the pro-gun lobby, Second Amendment advocates, and the “from my cold dead hands” posse is like hurricane wind, dashing, demolishing, and blowing away like so many mobile homes even the smallest and most reasonable suggestion that perhaps we should look at limiting firearms in hopes that another group of innocent people don’t find themselves huddled in the corner of a classroom, movie theater, or “insert next mass shooting location here” powerlessly waiting their turn to die violently.  The say to put armed guards at our elementary schools but would that not be the first person in the crosshairs of the next guy who comes to the realization that all his life’s problems will be solved if he can just go shoot some of people.  NRA spokesman Wayne LaPierre said about the hunt for the Boston Marathon bombers, “How many Bostonians wished they had a gun two weeks ago?"  Well guess what Wayne, the people of Boston didn’t need a gun because the police pulled out every stop, left no stone unturned, found the younger brother of the bombing duo and not another soul was harmed.  Now that’s how you use “whatever power” you hold to get the job done.

           Since the shooting I have seen blogs, Facebook posts, and heard statements from the leaders of firearms rights groups suggesting the President wants to take away our guns, trample the Constitution, and generally bring about a gun-less Armageddon where we’ll all be enslaved by the United Nations and forced to eat éclairs instead of doughnuts and drink French wine instead of Budweiser.  Right after the shooting there were blogs and Facebook posts asking that we pray for the lives lost that day.  The latter stopped showing up after about a week.  When did the former stop?  I’ll let you know…

            I need to apologize here.  I apologize to the children of Sandy Hook, the movie patrons of Aurora, Colorado, the onlookers at a Congresswoman’s meeting in Arizona, but mostly to the victims of the next shooting because I did nothing too.  I marched lockstep with Congress and our President as they said that this time it would be different when they, and I, knew it wouldn’t.  More children, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers will die and die horribly and we’ll wring our hands, pound our pulpits, and return to our regular scheduled programming having done nothing.  Again.