The Rooster
"Okeydoke"
July 24, 2015
By Adam Gopnik
...This genuinely insane circumstance (click here) —an ongoing national tragedy with an inarguably simple and available solution—once seemed to have merely depressed President Obama. But now, in this oddly rich harvest time of his Presidency, it seems to have properly outraged him, too. “It ought to obsess us,” he said about American gun violence after the Navy Yard gun massacre—remember that one?—“It ought to lead to some form of transformation.” On Thursday, in an interview with the BBC, the President stated, eloquently and succinctly, the basic circumstance of American case: “The United States of America is the one advanced nation on Earth in which we do not have sufficient common-sense gun-safety laws. Even in the face of repeated mass killings.” He also pointed out that, in the years since the September 11th attacks, fewer than a hundred Americans have been killed by terrorism, and tens of thousands by gun violence. (One can only imagine what laws we would have instated had organized terrorists instead of random terror killed so many.) Indeed, Obama spoke to the BBC a few hours before the Louisiana shooting. Think of it: even as he was articulating his frustration at our collective failure to create common-sense gun laws to stop mass killings, another one was about to happen. Speak of gun deaths in the United States, and you are likely to anticipate them....
There may be indecision among the people as to the wisdom of controlling the type of gun on the shelves of gun shops. There may be a reality of our current gun population among the American populous that seems to define violence over legislation. "If Americans can arm themselves this would not happen."
Limiting guns to the type used most in recreational use and home security is vital to the future to end the violence. It doesn't matter if Americans believe gun legislation is hopeless in it's ambitions. What does matter is to start now to end the danger within our citizens. The future of gun violence is as important as the reality Americans face today.
