Evidence Says “Thoughts and Prayers” Won’t Cut It

Can God Overthrow the National Rifle Association?

So what have we heard after daily mass killings for over a decade from politicians and candidates for office when they attempt to console families? Something about “our thoughts and prayers are with you?” That phrase is as powerful as the automatic salute to the military: “Thank you for your service,” which translated means: “Thank God I didn’t have to go.”

Of course, we do not have any atheists in Congress. An atheist could never be elected by such a God-fearing group in a country populated by 90% who believe in God. We have a diverse group of religious politicians who consistently vote against any thought of gun control in a country that is absolutely possessed and obsessed by the gun culture sponsored by the National Rifle Association.

There really are statements in the Bible and Koran containing rules about killing (such as “Thou shalt not”), but I guess Republicans and a few renegade Democrats like North Dakota Senator Heidi Heitkamp think it’s God’s responsibility—not theirs-- to rein in the gun culture. Evidently thoughts about re-election are much more powerful than thoughts about the effects of mass killings on a diverse society with 322 million people. There are Mormons, Baptists, Muslims, Catholics, Jews, Methodists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, and some other reps of mainline religions in Congress who flood social media with that worn-out phrase “our thoughts and prayers are with you” to relatives when innocent groups are riddled with bullets.

Look at one of the 20 first graders at Sandy Hook who ended up with 11 rounds from a Bushmaster AR-15 in his little body. The killer Adam Lanza fired 154 rounds in less than five minutes. The NRA, Remington Arms, Smith & Wesson, Sturm Ruger, and other gun makers call these “sporting rifles! What has been the result of all those thoughts and prayers over the mass killing years?

Why Does Great Britain Have Only 1.4 Firearm Homicides per Million While We Have 29.7 Per Million?

It might be because Great Britain has 1.8 million licensed firearms while we have an estimated 310 million unlicensed firearms. Because our vehicles are accounted for through licenses we know there are 253,574,832 on the road (give or take a few hundred depending upon accidents today), that we junked 11.4 million last year, and we know who owns them.

We just estimate the number of firearms. We don’t have a clue how many are in homes, who owns them, or who manufactured them.

We know that firearms kill as many people as two-ton autos and ten-ton trucks do. We have to recognize that we live in a gun culture.

Besides the well-advertised mass killings, if we add in the ones that don’t even make small headlines, we kill 92 people of all ages every day. Seven children die of firearms every day. We kill 33,000 a year with firearms and wound another 100,000. Since Sandy Hook in 2012 when 20 first graders were murdered we have killed 90,000 and wounded 210,000 people. It cost about $600 million at an average cost of slightly over $6,600 to bury these dead.

How much does it cost to repair large holes in heads, guts, limbs, and organs on average? $50,000? $100,000? $500,000? Multiply whatever your figure is by 210,000. It’s pretty big regardless of your choice.

The gun culture has taken us way beyond the tipping point of ever getting control of firearms, so that our death rate by firearms might equal that of civilized countries. The only way to equal the United Kingdom’s death rate is to confiscate about 300 million semi-automatic firearms in the United States. That would get us down to the same rate as British ownership of firearms. (By the way, the Brits still hunt.)

But our Second Amendment, based on the muskets and blunderbusses of 1789 that can fire about one round per minute, has created a huge “haboob” (ever see a tsunami of sand?) of assault rifles and semi-automatic pistols that can fire dozens of rounds in a few seconds.

Want to have an automatic AR-15? The parts are readily available on the Internet. Then you can fire 700 rounds a minute. But don’t try it. The barrel will melt before your very eyes. Take it from an old Marine machine gun platoon and rifle company commander.

Maybe NRA members will come to their senses and restore the organization to the point where it taught responsible gun ownership and safety and accepted reasonable controls on designs, types of ammo, physical characteristics of weapons, and registration. But now NRA members remind me of the zombies in the movie “The Night of The Living Dead,” marching in a dark night to the tune of the firearms industry, the insanity of Wayne LaPierre and his NRA Board of Directors selected by the manufacturers.

The NRA’s Theme: It Takes a Good Guy With a Gun to Kill a Bad Guy With a Gun

On October 13, 2015, a San Antonio, Texas man killed his wife with a shotgun blast to her chest when he thought she was an intruder in their home at 4 a.m.---On a Sunday in December a six-year-old Chicago boy killed his three-year-old brother while playing with his father’s loaded pistol----In the last decade six hunters have been shot by their dogs while in boats and cars----On October 21 in Albuquerque, New Mexico a four-year-old girl riding with her father and mother was shot and killed in road-rage incident---A Fargo, North Dakota parent wants his son’s high school principal fired because he denied having the “flag-draped” son carrying an assault rifle pictured in the school annual. I wonder where the kid gets his “more guns make us safer” attitude---We are presently at war with ISIS but 63% of Americans say they are more afraid of gun violence and only 29% fear they will be killed in a terrorist attack.

Since 1972 more Americans have been shot and killed by other Americans than all American soldiers killed in wars in the last 240 years---71% of African-Americans, because of the number of unarmed black men and children shot in the back by policemen in the last year, are worried about being a victim of gun violence, while only 13% are worried about terrorist attacks---In Biloxi, Mississippi a Waffle House waiter was shot and killed by a patron when she asked him to put out his cigarette because of the restaurant’s no-smoking policy---A three-year-old boy shot both of his parents in Albuquerque when he took a pistol out of his mother’s purse when he was looking for her iPod, dad in the butt, his pregnant mother in the shoulder.

19,000 Americans committed suicide with a gun last year because they were around guns. Only 2% of suicide attempts without guns are successful, with guns it’s 98%.

Why should we be selling .50 caliber sniper rifles to 18-year-old-kids? The round can penetrate an engine block at a mile----A semi-automatic “Street Sweeper” shotgun is advertised as a security weapon for use in Iraq, Afghanistan “or your living room.” One model has a 12-round magazine,

Three-year-old Jonathan Kaufman of Clinton, Michigan blew his head off with a loaded .40 caliber pistol he found in his dad’s closet. At three years, he just didn’t know any better---Bill Maher calls gun lovers “ammosexuals.” He says they have an “unnatural romantic relationship with their guns’’---Is a gun death every 25 minutes in the U.S. “normal?”

We Will Have to Depend on Thoughts and Prayers, Not on Congress

My favorite cartoonist Mike Luckovich of the Atlanta Constitution summarized what Congress when really pressed is capable of doing to eliminate the gun culture in the United States. Four Congressmen are outside the capitol (covered with scaffolding to indicate it seriously needs repair-inside and out) examining legislation they are planning to introduce to control guns. The bill reads: “Enough’s enough. We’re doubling prayers for victim’s families, initiating longer moments of silence, and allowing unlimited stuffed bears at makeshift shrines….” Since Congress is as useless (as my farmer dad used to say about politicians) as teats on a boar.

I am not anti-gun. I am not anti-hunter. I have shot my ration of squirrels because our farm family loved squirrel stew. I earned a Marine Corps Expert Rifleman’s Medal on the range with the M-1.

But I am pro-scientific evidence and anti-stupid. The Columbine High School mass murder of kids happened 16 years ago. A week after that mass killing Charlton “Moses” Heston with his God-like voice stood with an upraised 1874 rifle at the NRA podium and thundered: From these dead cold hands!” (He should have held an AR-15 with a 100-rd drum magazine). The rifle should have been snatched immediately from his hands and placed where the sun doesn’t shine, but Congress did nothing—and has done nothing since 1996 except watch while 528,000 additional Americans have died from firearms and another 1,600,000 wounded, some in wheelchairs, some with missing limbs, and some left with half a brain—like an Arizona Congresswoman.

I don’t expect anything to be done about control of our gun culture because Congress has turned into a sniveling no-pride of cowardly lions and they have to be thrown out of power before anything will be done. Certainly prayers have not been answered.

The only possibility for control would be the mass killing of pre-school, kindergarten, and first grade kids at New York private schools housing the children of Wall Street titans. Would it take 50 kids? A 100 kids? 200 kids? A malcontent with a converted automatic AR-15 and a couple of 100-rd drum magazines could do it. Remember, the American Psychiatric Association estimates that 6% of our population is bonkers at any one time, so our potential killers are in the millions.

I Call Upon the Flying Spaghetti Monster Church and the Pentecostal Snake Handlers to Help Us

The Baptists, Catholics, Jews, Methodists, Lutherans, and Presbyterians have not had prayers about guns answered, so I thought I would call on some lesser known churches to give it a shot, so to speak. There are over 30,000 of them in the country, so maybe some can prayer-twitter a Heavenly message.

The Flying Spaghetti Monster Church just put up a religious monument in Texas if I remember, so I thought I would call upon their members to help us. And the Snake Handlers have always impressed me with their passion and guts by wearing poisonous snakes around their necks while dancing to snake music…anyway, they should pray for the following: universal background checks for all gun sales (eliminate loopholes), gun registration, straw purchases, strict limits on magazines, clips, types of ammo, caliber; require a tool for reloading of magazines and clips, eliminate sale of “automatic parts” on the Internet, pass and fund studies on all public health aspects of firearm deaths and wounds, restrictions on sale of ammo, modernize all firearm records for instant use, make manufacturers legally responsible for poor design of product (why should shooters and bystanders be killed by weapons dropped on hard floors?), ban all assault weapons based on military-type weapons, require liability insurance for all firearms, require the development of personalized gun technology (chips), establish buyback programs for all firearms, and eliminate conceal-carry and strolling around in public areas with rifles—just for a start.

Remember: our West had prostitution, hard drinking, gambling, and many other sins, but sheriffs often didn’t allow guns in towns like Dodge and Tombstone. We should take another look at the Second Amendment, too.