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In reply to the discussion: Obama is not going to take your guns away. We are. [View all]calimary
(80,693 posts)I'd go for it NOW before the funeral Masses even begin for all those little victims. I'd exploit EVERY bit of the mourning and sadness to get this jump-started. Yes. Exploit. And I'm sorry to have to get crass, but I've never made a secret of the fact that I'm as Machiavellian as the next guy. And if we can use this horror to push for legislation that truly does save lives and does benefit the greater good, why shouldn't we?
There may be no better time than NOW!
I'll bet ANY of those parents who are mourning a murdered CHILD from this massacre would tell anyone who'd listen that if they could do nothing else at this point, they'd want to try to keep OTHER parents from going through this agony. They'd want to move Heaven and Earth, if they could, to make sure that this nightmare never befalls any other mom or dad in America. Every parent I've ever seen in recent memory, who's had to live through this kind of ordeal where their beloved innocent child becomes a murder victim, from John Walsh onward, has said a version of the same thing. Especially when they embrace activism. What they want more than anything, if they can never get their precious baby back, then they want to do whatever they can to prevent this from happening to ANY other parent, and KEEP THIS FROM HAPPENING AGAIN.
How have we been doing so far? Not very good, judging from the track record we see. TWO multiple shootings in the same week - the first one in a mall early in the week, and Friday, Newtown, Connecticut. And, then, the day after the Connecticut school massacre, a woman is shot to death outside the Excalibur Hotel in Las Vegas.
WTF???????
And don't forget what Howard Dean said during the 2004 campaign, and has continued to preach: the only way you lose is if you don't try. So what if it's a high mountain to climb? Things change. Attitudes can and do change also. Look how much talk and coverage and attention there now is, regarding the whole notion of significant change that manifested itself in this last election. Look how fast public opinion is tilting toward acceptance of marriage equality. There's a majority now, which is a change just from a few years ago. I forget how many years but I do remember it was under five. That's an AMAZING shift in the attitude of the collective and it's being so noted in the media. That used to be a high mountain, too - widely regarded as pretty unsurmountable. Religiosos were against it, emphatically and extremely. Now? I recently saw some poll numbers on "Hardball" (or some such program) that showed young church-goers comprised the highest percentage of support for marriage equality.
So why can't we seize this opportunity when public opinion is running strongly in favor of SOME kind of stepped-up gun control? SOMETHING!
Why can't we do something that would TRULY honor the innocent dead? DO it for them, and in their memory. So their deaths would not remain merely senseless. So they didn't die in vain.