Morning in America Eclipse: Travel Alert to the United States - Gun Violence Targets the American Dream

As an American citizen of the world, I'm deeply sorry for the thousands of preventable gun violence death of all people. 

This preventable slaughter is darkening the American dream and eclipsing the metaphor "Morning in America".

Exactly where is Ronald Reagan's Morning in America?  

Instead of idealism, we're killing ourselves with guns in record numbers. Now, the preventable violence has made an international embarrassment out of the American Dream.

"..our country is prouder and stronger and better..," President Reagan said in his now nostalgic 1984 "Morning in America" campaign ad.  

Of course, President Reagan was tragically the victim of gun violence.  Yet, before he died in 2004 of Alzheimer's, he spoke out against gun violence.

"I do not believe in taking away the right of the citizen for sporting, for hunting and so forth, or for home defense. But I do believe that an AK-47, a machine gun, is not a sporting weapon or needed for defense of a home.'' ---Ronald Reagan, at his birthday celebration in 1989.
Although a majority of Americans agree about eliminating gun violence with stronger regulations of ownership, we've been, heretofore, unsuccessful in changing our nation's gun ownership laws to prevent the slaughter of innocents. 

America's city streets, especially in Chicago, our families where domestic violence is out of control, going to school or jogging in Oklahoma, are now dangerous places to be, because of the risk of gun violence.

Once again,  we're summoned to mourning after learning of the tragic killing of the 22 year old Australian athlete, Christopher Lane, who was shot and killed, without reason, by a gang of three minors who are also thugs, on August 16th,  in Duncan, Oklahoma.
I didn't know Mr. Lane, but I'd be willing to bet he believed in the American Dream.  Now, his family in Australia is living the nightmare of knowing their son is dead.

How did a gang of three minors get access to a gun and murder an innocent young Australian rising baseball star, while he was jogging in Oklahoma?  Since when do minors have Second Amendment Rights to own guns?

This senseless evil act of violence against Lane was coupled by another (thankfully unsuccessful) attack at a school near Atlanta, Georgia, when a gunman, with an AK-47, like President Reagan spoke about, added more imagery to those of the Sandy Hook Elementary slaughter of innocents on December 16, 2012 or the Columbine Massacre of April 20, 1999..  

Well before these incidents, back on July 23, 2012, Australia's then Deputy Prime Minister Tim Fischer had already issued a travel advisory for his country's citizens, who were planning to visit America.

Beware gun-toting US: Fischer- issued this warning a year before Mr. Lane was murdered last Friday in Oklahoma:  

"It has reached the stage where the likelihood of being shot is 15 times greater in the US than in Australia," he said.

BY:HARRY EDWARDS
From:The Australian
July 23, 2012 12:00AM


FORMER deputy prime minister Tim Fischer issued an extraordinary warning to Australians planning to take advantage of the strong dollar and travel to the US: go at your own peril.

Mr Fischer's warning came after 12 people were killed and a further 58 wounded when a gunman fired on a crowded cinema during a screening of the latest Batman movie in the Denver, Colorado, suburb of Aurora.

"It has reached the stage where the likelihood of being shot is 15 times greater in the US than in Australia," he said.

"People should be aware of this when making a decision to travel to the US.

"If I go to the US, I will factor this in and I will be very reluctant to take my family to the USA in the foreseeable future."

Four American presidents have been victims of gun violence:

1.  Abraham Lincoln - murdered in Washington DC 1865

2.  William McKinley - murdered in Buffalo NY 1901

3.  John F. Kennedy - murdered Dallas, TX 1963

4.  Ronald Reagan - seriously wounded, nearly died except for expert trauma care, assassinated in Washington DC, in 1981.

Several other presidents, including Gerald Ford, were also targeted.

Our reputation as Americans, who were inspired by "Morning in America" is experiencing damaging sun spots. Our American Dream is becoming a nightmare, as gun violence in cities like Chicago makes living there as risky as being stationed with the US Army in the Taliban infested Afghanistan.

In my opinion, God Rest Their Souls, our four late Presidents, who were victims of gun violence, would readily join hands in a quartet of ghosts to warn us about the future of America in the wake of growing gun violence.  We're killing our young people!

Our American Dream is becoming a grizzly "Ghost of America Past" (to paraphrase Charles Dickens), as unbridled gun violence grows, causing preventable harm to thousands of promising young people, and world leaders and, now, to the bereaved family of Christopher Lane.

I'm so deeply sorry.  I'd change the gun laws if I could...but, because Americans have, heretofore, been unsuccessful in changing Second Amendment Rights, we can never bring Christopher Lane back.