LAS VEGAS JUST THE MOST RECENT GUN VIOLENCE-WHERE'S THE UPROAR?

Why haven't we heard from wacky Wayne LaPierre, head of the National Rifle Assn., during the recent gun violence? There was Santa Barbara, then Seattle, Atlanta, and now Las Vegas. Four incidents of horrific gun massacre in four major cities in less than three weeks. A total of 13 killed and 16 injured. Did I hear, "Guns don't kill, people do?" Or maybe it was some left-overs from the mob in Las Vegas that made them do it. Could LaPierre be trying to decide whether we can call these "shootings." What bothers me most is the fact that the American public remains quiet, as if these kinds of events are now considered acceptable. Hey out there, don't you care that your friends, neighbors and relatives are being slaughtered with one of the 300 million guns on U.S. streets?

Maybe when it's one of your own you will.  

NRA WANTS TO WEAKEN VIRGINIA GUN VIOLENCE PREVENTION LAW

The Virginia Center for Public Safety reports the NRA wants to scrap a Virginia database that is state-of-the-art and second to none in the nation. The National Rifle Assn. is calling on its members to help repeal the 1989 law, the Virginia Firearms Transaction Program (VFTP). The VFTP works along with the FBI’s National Instant Background Checks System (NICS) to check the background of those purchasing firearms in the Commonwealth of Virginia. This helps catch those people not eligible to purchase firearms like felons and the mentally ill. And the point is it works much better than NICS. So why would anyone want to get rid of it? Only a bunch of morons that value their stupid gun rights over the lives of innocent people. 

 ThinkProgress details how the Bush administration proposedlegislation requiring states to share mental health history. It was passed by Congress but not until after the NRA watered it down significantly. The final bill set up restoration programs for the mentally ill, in effect to put guns back into their hands. And the definition for "mental defect" was narrowed to make it easier for this person to get his or her gun back. It's the typical NRA gun-running philosophy to keep putting more weapons on the street. Which means gun manufacturers sell more and give more money to the NRA. Pathetic and disgusting but seemingly approved by a lot of the American public, also pathetic and disgusting.

DEMOCRACY ALLIANCE PAVING WAY FOR GUN CONTROL-NRA CRINGES

Wacky Wayne LaPierre in his glory

Let's just look at what this club for gun loving misfits is for and against. The National Rifle Assn. is against universal background checks, lawsuits against the firearm industry, micro stamping and any tampering with the 2nd Amendment. They are for assault rifles, large capacity magazines, concealed and open carry anywhere and Stand Your Ground Law. There's more but these are the ones covered in a recent release from their Institute for Legislative Action. They rail over former NY Mayor Michael Bloomberg putting up $50 million to fight gun control along with George Soros's group divvying up $40 million. Wacky Wayne LaPierre's NRA addicts spent $40 million in 2008, $10 million of that to defeat President Obama. On the Colorado recall alone they spent $350,000. We know the NRA is against anything that would restrict their beloved guns. But what this bunch of gun nuts is finding out is that there are many of us out there that place saving the lives of innocent individuals over their stupid gun rights.

SMART MONEY GOING TO GUN CONTROL SINCE NEWTOWN

Michael Bloomberg

As of the end of April, the dollars with sense have passed the dollars with blood on their hands prompted by the Newtown gun massacre where 26 lives were taken by shooter Adam Lanza, 20 of them children around six years old. And they have apparently done it through grassroots organizations, you might say just the opposite of the gun nuts of the National Rifle Assn. Michael Bloomberg kicked in $50 million, Gabby Giffords and Mark Kelly's gun control group around $15 million. Gun control is about $5 million ahead of gun rights so far in the 2014 election cycle. They have trailed by over $31 million in the past. Now there are dour predictions out there for the GOP retaking control of the Senate and no chance of the Left taking back the House. Does this kind of momentum change that equation?

FAULT FOR GUN VIOLENCE PLACED EVERYWHERE BUT WHERE IT BELONGS...THE NRA

It's the media, it's the criminal world, it's video games, it's the U.S. government. The National Rifle Assn.'s list goes on and on but fails to identify the real reason we have so much gun violence in this country: The NRA. It's opposition to reasonable gun control, things like background checks. Wacky Wayne LaPierre, NRA head, has one solution to the problem: more guns. Based on the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, there are about 300 million guns in the United States. Access to firearms is about as easy as getting an ice cream cone, maybe easier. So we need more?

Missouri repealed a law requiring background checks leading to a 16 percent increase in the state murder rate, according to  Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research in Think Progress. Another study from this site reports that states, "...with more expansive background check laws experience 48 percent less gun trafficking, 38 percent fewer deaths of women shot by intimate partners, and 17 percent fewer firearms involved in aggravated assaults. How many facts like this are necessary to convince Congress and...wacky Wayne? 

HERE'S A NEW ONE-NRA DOESN'T WANT TO CALL SHOOTINGS "SHOOTINGS"

So what the hell do you call them, a reunion for gun nuts? This gaggle of reality restricted gun lovers over life complains the media "race[s] to label anything with a gun as a shooting." Although not directly related to the Isla Vista California shootings--oh sorry, I meant to say a completely innocuous use of firearms to kill innocent people in order to protect the rights of the radical double digit gun culture--the video was released right after that killing spree. Maybe the NRA is just pissed since in Santa Barbara three people were stabbed, only three killed with a gun; how could this killer be so inconsiderate to use a knife. Strange reasoning but then we're talking about the National Rifle Assn. The above article points out, "Firearms are used in 69.3 percent of murders. Of 37 public mass killings between 2006 and 2013, 33 involved firearms..." All gun control advocates eagerly await the latest epiphany from wacky Wayne LaPierre, NRA head.  

SOUTH RISES AGAIN...WITH MORE RACISM

Not just the old South anymore

Jim Crow days are back again...in Memphis, Tennessee. I spent several years there going to college and working in television, in fact, the very TV station that reported this story, WREG-TV. I left the South as fast as I could because in those days, the 1960s, racism was rampant all over that part of the country. I know that because I traveled six southeastern states with a publishing company. And one of my neighbors was a member of the Ku Klux Klan, something I found out after leaving Memphis. By reading and through friends still there who share my views on racism, the stigma has never left the South; it just became somewhat subdued.

But not like the supervisor at the Memphis cotton company who told a black employee, you can't drink from the "white" water fountain and if you do we'll hang you. He was fired but the damage was already done. You just wonder how much more of this is going on in the South, or the North, or the Midwest, or the Southwest, or the West or the Northwest.