Gun Violence is Caused by Guns - Victims Must Call for Action

It's completely unbelievable, but many people won't accept the root cause of gun violence. 

Gun violence deniers are blindly led by advocates for the National Rifle Association, who claim that tragedies like Aurora, and Columbine, in Colorado, Tuscon, in Arizona, Newtown, in Connecticut, Virginia Tech University and, sadly, many other places, are somehow not related to guns. They say the preventable deaths are caused by mental illness.  Incredulously, deniers won't acknowledge the role of guns in "gun violence". These NRA advocates are especially blind to regulations to reduce unbridled access to murderous assault weapons, which have no other purpose than to kill people.

Let's imagine we're in a time machine launched, like a comet, into the 22nd century.  How can we explain to these future people that their 20th century ancestors couldn't correlate guns with death?  It's analogous to how the modern descendants of the 17th and 18th century slave owners feel, today, about their ancestors, who fell victim to believing the Negro was property, rather than human.  It's disconcerting to discover slave owners in a family's tree, especially when it's pretty well known how plantation owners were frequently the father of many children born on their properties.  Modern families don't like to discuss ancestors who may have owned slaves.  In our time machine, the society we find at the end of the mythical journey will ask how we allowed so many thousands of innocent people to be murdered by guns, when the cause of these deaths was preventable.  

Yet, when Senator John McCain was confronted in a town hall meeting by an Aurora Colorado victim, the mother of a person killed in the crazed attack, he took the position of protecting the assault weapons, while the audience cheered.  How cruel.  There's no way of explaining Senator McCain's callous response to our 22nd century time travel hosts.  Even worse, there's no justice in the way the audience staged their support for Senator McCain's response.  These deniers of cause and effect are insensitive to say the least and in total denial about the long term consequences of their steadfast support for guns.  They're making a bad situation even worse.  Eventually, these gun violence deniers will wake up to the reality of their wrong mindedness.  As Senator McCain said, in his insensitive town hall response to the Aurora victim's mother, "let's give it to you straight". Okay, here it is:  those who do nothing to deter gun violence, but blindly support unmitigated second amendment rights, are as responsible for the next deadly incident as if they bought the deadly weapons themselves.  It's like a special category of manslaughter.  

A simple solution to ending gun violence is to take action to reduce the numbers of guns in circulation.  Even if the horse is already out of the barn on access to guns (so many are already in circulation) the solution to preventing more deaths is to reduce the ease of future availability, to protect children not yet born. Think about explaining to our 22nd century hosts how something was eventually done to prevent their families from enduring the terror of gun violence in our society.

It's sad to say, but Americans who call for common sense gun regulations need to hear more from those who are the tragic victims of gun violence  Although it's emotionally painful to hear these stories relived, and worse for the victims, it's essential to listen to them over the clutter of fear messages perpetrated by advocates of the NRA.