In a rare interview:

Pope Francis is lamenting (click here) that the use of guns by civilians to defend themselves is becoming a “habit.” He also criticized laws that criminalize homosexuality as “unjust,” saying God loves all his children just as they are. Those were among the topics he discussed during an interview Tuesday with The Associated Press....

Pope: Critics help us grow, but I want them to say it to my face (click here)

George Washington's Farewell Address (click here)

It is the job of the Secret Service to know where danger lies for the people they protect.

January 25, 2023

United States Secret Service (click here)

Nearly three-quarters of assailants (click here) used guns to carry out mass-casualty attacks between 2016 and 2020, according to a study released by the federal government Wednesday.

Over one-third of the attackers experienced unstable housing within two decades of their attack. And nearly one-quarter shared "final communications" in the run-up to launching them, including calling people to say goodbye, authoring suicide notes and posting writings online.

The 72-page report, authored by the U.S. Secret Service's National Threat Assessment Center, analyzed 173 incidents that resulted in three or more individuals injured or killed across public or semi-public spaces, including businesses, schools and houses of worship. Researchers hope new insights into the behaviors of attackers will prevent future tragedies by informing bystander reporting.

The findings — which span 37 states and Washington, D.C. — come as a community in Monterey Park, California, mourns the death of 11 people after a gunman opened fire in a ballroom during Lunar New Year celebrations over the weekend. Less than two days later, seven people were killed in a mass shooting at two mushroom farms in the Northern California city of Half Moon Bay. Three people were fatally shot in an attack at a convenience store in Yakima, Washington, on Tuesday....

The Good Guy with a Gun strategy is not working. It never really has.

January 25, 2023

By MaryClaire Da;e

...In 2022, (click here) the United States marked its first deadly gun rampage of the year on Jan. 23 — a year ago Monday. By that same date this year, six mass killings have claimed 39 lives, according to a database of mass killings maintained by The Associated Press, USA Today and Northeastern University....

January 25, 2023

By Danny Westneat

...Anyone else also tired of tortured analogies?

“It’s not the gun,” said state Sen. Phil Fortunato, of Auburn, at a news conference earlier this month against gun control. “Go tell the guy who rented a Home Depot truck and drove it through a crowd. … What are you going to do, ban automobiles?”

You can also kill somebody by dropping an anvil on them from the 10th floor. What are you going to do, ban anvils? Ban tall buildings?

Seriously: What are we going to do?

Just since Saturday, there have been at least eight mass shootings in the U.S., with at least 25 killed and at least 45 injured. I keep saying “at least” because this doesn’t count the Yakima rampage, and also there probably will be a new one by the time this sentence is published....

If it is not the gun, then what is it? The so called checks and balances that are supposed to detect anticipated dangerous gun behavior doesn't work either.

January 25, 2023
By Denise Lavoie

Newport News - Concerned staff warned administrators (click here) at a Virginia elementary school three times that a 6-year-old boy had a gun and was threatening other students in the hours before he shot and wounded a teacher, but the administration “was paralyzed by apathy” and didn’t call police, remove the boy from class or lock down the school, the wounded teacher’s lawyer said Wednesday.

Diane Toscano, an attorney for Abigail Zwerner, said during a news conference that she has notified the school board in Newport News that the 25-year-old teacher at Richneck Elementary School plans to sue the school district over the Jan. 6 shooting, which left Zwerner with serious injuries....

There was an attempted coup d'état of a free and fair election in 2021 at the time the electoral votes were being tallied according to the law within the USA Constitution. We have seen many members of extremist racist groups tried and convicted for sedition conspiracy. There is every reason under the sun to ban assault weapons from import into the USA. Now. Today. Through a presidential order they can be banned. The Second Amendment stops at the overthrow of the USA Constitution.

On the US Senate website is George Washington's Farewell Address after two terms of leading the country of 13 states after the Revolutionary War. 

...Washington’s principal concern (click here) was for the safety of the eight-year-old Constitution. He believed that the stability of the Republic was threatened by the forces of geographical sectionalism, political factionalism (also known as partisanism or partisanship), and interference by foreign powers (like Russia) in the nation’s domestic affairs. He urged Americans to subordinate sectional jealousies to common national interests. Writing at a time before political parties had become accepted as vital extraconstitutional, opinion-focusing agencies, Washington feared that they carried the seeds of the nation’s destruction through petty factionalism. Although Washington was in no sense the father of American isolationism, since he recognized the necessity of temporary associations for “extraordinary emergencies,” he did counsel against the establishment of “permanent alliances with other countries,” connections that he warned would inevitably be subversive of America’s national interest....

I suppose one has to walk a mile in the shoes of the great George Washington at the time of his resignation in order to understand how protective the people of the USA were at the time of their precious new democracy, but, he is very clear about his concerns.

The threats to our democracy are real. There are people dying everyday in this country of which democracy still stands. They are dying by gun violence and while there are a few instances whereby a moral person ends the killing with their own gun, that is not the overwhelming reality of this country.

The extremism that has existed due to the lavish monies of the gun lobby is now destroying lives in the face of every attempt to stop it. This is not unique, the same pattern manifests in other countries where guns became popular to empower individuals. The problem is the gun. It absolutely is the gun that is the problem in the USA.

The Second Amendment is not about economic gain of an industry.

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.

We no longer have a national militia comprised of patriots with weapons used to shoot game for the sake if eating it.

The Second Amendment strongly implies that armed citizens are necessary for the security of the country. Those ideas were born from the fact colonists had limited ability to kill and the ability they had was vital as a national security strategy.

...These included bladed weapons (click here) used for thousands of years and black powder firearms that had only been used for a few hundred years.  All of the firearms that were used had flintlock technology.  Flintlock firearms utilized a firing mechanism whereby when the trigger was pulled, a piece of rock (flint) would strike a piece of steel creating a spark that would ignite black powder to discharge the piece....

If the soldiers of the Revolutionary War were alive today to witness the magnificent strength of the USA military while there was carnage in our communities there would be no Second Amendment. 

National Security today in the USA is based in alliances with countries we once fought for our independence. It also includes some of the most sophisticated armaments known. The National Security today includes dimensions such as cyber and terrorism. The USA does not need small arms within it's borders to protect from foreign invasion. Never once did the authors of the USA Constitution ever expect the country to have a problem with carnage of it's own people for ideologies that favor petty factionalism, to use President Washington's own words.

The elections of 2016 were driven by a failing millionaire with the assistance of a foreign power, namely Russia. We know for a fact the two entities dovetailed for their own enrichment. There is no denying it. It doesn't matter that the Mueller investigation never turned up direct links between Russia and Trump, but, only affiliations that lend itself to suspicions that cannot be resolved even today. All that means is the law can't bring its weight to complete the picture, but, cooperative interests by the two parties existed.

The desire by Trump to destroy the USA Constitution by assailing it's authority to bring to bear a free and fair election is well known today. There is no doubt. He fought his own security detail to achieve his goal to deliver himself to the bloody scene of the attack on the USA Capitol. The only reason Trump was not there to assail the Vice President's authority during this joint session of the Congress was because his Secret Service officers refused to let it happen. If anything the Secret Service on January 6th protected the USA Constitution with their own lives. The question remains, if Trump was armed would he have killed those in his way? He literally was desiring the disarming of the protections (the magnetometers)  afforded him when he stated the armed crowd at the Ellipse was there for him and would never kill him with their guns.

Where in the Secret Service is the unspoken rule never to let Presidents arm themselves against their security agents? I don't think it exists, heck, Cheney shot his hunting friend in the face. So, the idea the Presidents can't have guns is not realistic. Maybe it was just Trump himself and his ludicrous values that allowed Helsinki to happen that came into play on January 6th. Maybe it was just the agents longing to live through the day that became all to obvious. Pence's agents wanted to put him in that car and speed away from the Capitol in the worst way, but, the Vice President's lack of cooperation stood in their way.

The point is the dangers that the Late President George Washington warned against are alive today, including, the weapons of war on our streets that are killing vastly more Americans than should be tolerated.

The Republicans (click here) have benefitted from monies of the gun lobby to the point where a Russian operative was working the crowd with smiles and money pouring from the NRA. In return, the Republicans have eliminated gun laws uniformly through another organization named ALEC (click here), hence, facilitating profits for the gun industry. I don't care how covert it was it is simply Quid Pro Quo that allows profits vs. life.

We know from the past that "The Assault Weapons Ban" worked to reduce the number of dead Americans. It is time to question the wisdom of allowing assault weapons on the street of the USA and return to sane and safe policy to roll back the unmitigated access to guns of every kind.

Freedom is a great part of being American, but, freedom ends where gun rights begins. Freedom to kill at will within the borders of the USA must end and the country secured from violence against it's political processes. It has gone to far. It is time to end the carnage.

I say again. This level of killing is not unique to the USA. Every country that has experienced the onslaught of the NRA and other such gun lobbies motivated by profit are and have experienced the rise of violence to the point of instability of government.