This is a graphic used by NAGR – The National Association for Gun Rights. They have been using it for quite some time. Not just in the wake of the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary – as they seek to preempt proposed gun control measures – but much of the last year. To be clear, that year included some high profile mass shootings.
The use of this graphic is just the latest, but it's a misplaced sentiment that has taken hold of gun rights advocates since before the election of President Obama.
It seems that the massacre at Sandy Hook has stirred many into action. There are new calls for gun control and other measures, aimed at attempting to curb the violence. The president has made the problem of increased gun violence a top priority – giving Vice President Joe Biden the lead in organizing talks with various groups interested in the issue. That move by the president represents the first significant signal that he is willing to talk gun control and the problem of gun violence. In fact, before this most recent discussion, President Obama's most significant move on gun control was to include the right to carry concealed weapons onto federal properties – a provision included to pacify members of congress into supporting the Affordable Care Act.
Those are the facts.
However, gun rights groups – like the NRA & NAGR – have spent the last 5 years stoking fear in the hearts of their constitutiencies. Obama is going to take your guns.
They have no problem posting about their gun rights multiple times a day. Why shouldn't there be someone posting alternately, or pointing out their ridiculousness.
In light of these situations, I feel it is someone's responsibiliy to keep an eye on and report the activities of these groups. A beat reporter is a journalist that covers one thing extensively and exculsively. No one has hired me, but I feel a certain civic responsiblity to ensure I do my part to shed light on the less visible portions of the efforts to propagandize the fight for responsible gun control measures – as part of an overall strategy to combat the problem.
It's not something I spend all of my time on. I have my Google alerts set. My eyes are trained to catch stories who's subject matter has anything to do with this problem.
I feel passionately about this – obviously. As I said in my sermon the Sunday after the Newtown massacre:
I can only speak for myself, but I wouldn’t have been so righteously angry if it hadn’t just happened earlier in the week at another school. If it hadn’t just happened in Aurora, Colorado, I probably would have been less angry. If I didn’t remember my high school government teacher turning on the television so we could see the helicopter footage of students being shuffled out of Columbine High School, I wouldn’t have reacted with such a fiery repeal.
I'm sure my classmates will remember the student that was removed from school, once they found his “hit list” – a list of students who had bullied him – shortly after the Columbine shooting. Maybe some of those people on the list remember how that felt?
Now that I'm a parent – and someone who pays attention to the news – it is difficult to see the uptick in these shootings as anything but a threat that is creeping into so much of the public arena. The Sandy Hook massacre took place on a Friday. That Sunday night, I got a call via the school corporation's automated message system. It was a message from the Superintendent, ensuring parents that the school has measures in place for such emergencies. That call was super-comforting.
The reason I'm doing what I'm doing, is because I couldn't stand getting a call of a different kind – saying one of my children had been mowed down in another massacre. Not that I could do much to prevent it, but not doing anything is not acceptable anymore.
I am concerned and I have a voice. No one hired me to do this, but I'm stepping forward to be the beat reporter for the fight against blind, 2nd amendment fervor.
The graphic that heads this post is a lie. To this very day, the only measures the President has taken on the issue of gun ownership is to ensure you can legally take your weapons into more places. My job will be to point out the most outrageous arguments and the most vicious lies.
I won't post more than once – maybe twice – a day (and sometimes not at all), but don't expect that I shall give it up anytime soon.
