Weapons of Limited Mass Destruction.

Glock 19: 9mm with 33 round magazine

Friday afternoon, I took a minute to check my email, and on my home page learned the following*:

"27 Killed in Connecticut Shooting, Including 18 Children" (NYT)

"Two Officers Shot,One Killed in Memphis Drug Bust" (ABC)

"One of Two Men Shot this AM in East Toledo Has Died" (TN)

"Fla. Man Indicted in Shooting Of Teen Over Loud Music" (USA)

"Details But No Answers in Oregon Mall Shooting" (CNN)

And last, but not least, from Michigan:

"State House Passes Bill Allowing Concealed Weapons in Schools, Day Care Centers, Stadiums, Churches" (Detroit Free Press) Interestingly, some of the GOP legislators who passed this bill argued that it was a safety measure! The same perverted logic they use in calling an anti-worker law a "Right to Work" law

I learned  of all of this gun violence in less than five minutes. If I had attempted to seek out cases, chances are I would still be reading of the many others which were not on my home page.

And all of this, a few weeks after the sports world was shocked to learn that Kansas City Chief's Jouvan Belcher shot and killed his pregnant girlfriend before shooting and killing himself. When Bob Costas and other sport writers questioned the role of guns in our society, the NRA and their puppets raised the usual uproar and responded with their favorite piece of bumper-sticker logic -- "Guns don't kill, people do."  If the issue were actually that simple, we could have Clint Eastwood explain it to an empty chair.

The problem is: there are guns and then there are guns. Some guns have no purpose other than to kill living beings. If you think you need a handgun to protect yourself, you are carrying it because it gives you a sense of confidence knowing that you have the ability to kill someone by squeezing the trigger. Thus it's purpose is still to kill someone or in a more fortunate scenario to maim someone.

And then there are automatic weapons, whose purpose is not only to kill living beings, but to kill as many as possible in the shortest period of time. In Newtown, Connecticut, 28 human beings (including 17 very young children) were killed in a very short period of time because Adam Lanza had automatic weapons that made it possible.

In the Jouvan Belcher case, there were some who maintained that if he did not have a gun, he would have killed his girlfriend with a knife, candlestick or a bow and arrow. In Connecticut, if Adam Lanza did not have access to automatic weapons, he may have still killed his schoolteacher mother, but he would NOT have been able to kill 24 or 25 other people. If he had a knife, a candlestick or even a six shot revolver, many of those murdered children might be alive today.

We must face facts.  In the name of the 2nd Amendment and the Norman Rockwell version of sport hunting, we are making it legal for Americans to stock pile automatic weapons --weapons of limited mass destruction. These weapons have no other function than to extinguish human life and that is why Jared Loughner (Gifford massacre) and Adam Lanza seek them out and are able to get their hands on them.

It's time for the reasonable people within the NRA  to admit that not all weapons are equal, some are weapons of limited mass destruction and should be banned.

As for the argument that the more guns there are out there, the safer we are, consider the last five years. Gun sales have been at record levels, and so has gun violence. (Last year, 10,728 people were killed by handguns in this country.) Also, if this argument were true, Mexico should be well on its way to being violence free.

As a country we should be able to reach a more reasonable and balanced gun policy. The NRA's all-or-nothing approach is neither.

* Some of the details of these headlines may have changed as more information became available, but basic story remained the same.