Here’s what I’d like Congress to hear: On Feb. 15, 17 people were killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., shot by a 19-year-old boy who, so far, seems to be a lonely, disturbed adolescent with an AR-15 and plenty of ammunition.
Why did he have access to that gun?
Some of you are saying something like, “Now is not the time to discuss gun control because we are all in the throes of sadness or hysteria.” Some are saying something like, “I have the right to talk about gun control despite my sadness.”
The fact is, all of you, ladies and gentlemen of Congress, have failed to take action on gun control, so all of you, regardless of political party, have the blood of those Floridians on your hands. You are at fault for allowing that disturbed kid to buy an AR-15. You have failed in one of your basic responsibilities as public servants: protect your people. You did nothing after Columbine; you did nothing after Sandy Hook; you did nothing after Virginia Tech; and you did nothing after 56 people were gunned down in Las Vegas like plastic ducks at an amusement park shooting booth. And you are likely to do nothing now.
You are spineless tools of your own re-election, financed by lobbies like the National Rifle Association, and it is clear that you value your own re-election over the lives of Americans. You don’t deserve to call yourselves public servants. One of the reasons Donald Trump got elected was because he said he would drain the swamp of the likes of you. Well, judging from his initial words of sympathy following Parkland, he is the largest croc in the swamp and has no intention of draining the comfortable lair becoming his home.
In his speech to the cameras, Trump mentioned mental health instead of gun control, as if the mental health of three hundred and fifty million people can be monitored. Please, members of Congress, don’t be distracted by media focusing on this particular shooter’s mental problems or the specific signs that the FBI might have missed to get him off the street.
Each specific case will have its own set of unfortunate particulars, but all cases have one thing in common: guns. It is obvious to me that nobody outside a military post or base has any business owning an automatic or semi-automatic weapon. Such weapons are not for hunting; their sole purpose is to kill people. A responsible Congress can see that outlawing such weapons does not threaten the Second Amendment to the Constitution, which was enacted to allow Americans to protect themselves from a potentially despotic government.
So far, in my 69 years of life, I have seen no opportunities to shoot at citizens of a foreign government who are attacking the homeland of the USA, and I have seen no opportunities to fire back at representatives of the American government — national militia or local gendarmes — who might be turning despotic on a large scale.
I can hunt safely and effectively with one or two bullets in a rifle I am free to own, and, if need be, I can defend my home with the same weapon. I do not want or need an AR-15.
I call on all Americans to do what President Trump cannot: throw all of you out and start over. No matter what party you incumbents belong to, you should be voted out of office if you do nothing about American kids being shot and killed. Apparently, you can’t stand up to a gun lobby proffering blood money; let’s see if you can stand up to an irate body politic with the most powerful weapon in the world: the right to vote.
John W. Adams is a Northfield resident.