Dear Mr. Editor,
US GUN OWNERSHIP DEBATE
There is considerable interest in the debate now going on in the United States relative to restrictions on gun ownership. A month ago in Connecticut, 28 people, including 20 innocent children, were riddled with bullets from an assault weapon in the hands of a deranged young man, and killed in a matter of seconds. Assault rifles are the weapons of choice by deranged people or those seeking revenge.
Yet, the National Rifle Association (NRA), which controls many members of Congress through fear and intimidation, opposes any ban on assault weapons – and the magazines they use to fire countless bullets – claiming that gun owners need these weapons for self-protection from government intrusions. (How many bullets do you need to kill and intruder?)
So let’s look at this powerful group which has so much control in Congress. (It has a huge budget and uses campaign contributions to reward or punish candidates in primary elections, especially Republicans.) The NRA in early years was more interested in education and safety of it members and sponsored seminars on these subjects. That soon changed.
In recent years, however, with a more extreme leadership having taken over, the NRA has become a front for gun manufacturers, the result of the huge donations they receive from them, and now the NRA, as a shill for the gun makers, focuses upon protecting the profits of their benefactors in the guise of protecting gun owners from perceived encroachments by the Federal Government. Manufacturers and gun sellers make enormous profits on assault weapons, and this is why they don’t want a ban on assault weapons or the magazines that fuel them.
The NRA also vehemently opposes a proposed UN rule that would ban the sale of assault weapons internationally. They now go not to individuals for so-called self protection, but to dictators and terrorists for purposes of killing people. Why the opposition? Most of these weapons are made in America, and the manufacturers there make huge profits on these sales. The NRA is more interested in protecting their benefactors than they are in stopping killings, even in other parts of the world. The NRA has come to represent a real danger in America.
Stephen A. Hopkins
