Firearms

	
   Date: 
        Tue, 21 Mar 2000 17:14:08 PST
   From: 
        "Mark Gilley" 
   




Illegal Drug Sale Rampant

A drug that is so easy to get that children on playgrounds indulge in it 
openly.  A drug that kills...a drug so dangerous even adults die from its 
use, a drug that kills wantonly, sparing no one, whose abuse is a growing 
epidemic.  A drug that, in the hands of disturbed teenagers, can be still 
more deadly--that in the hands of a deranged adult, will lead to total 
destruction.  How can we stop this outrage?  How can we put and end to this 
slaughter of the innocents?  How can we crack down on the peddlers of this 
diabolical addiction?

Such is indeed the case in our country, the United States.  But the menace 
is possession of firearms, a deadly, addictive drug if ever there was one.

Why are firearms not dealt with like the diabolical plague they are?  Why 
should guns, more dangerous than any illegal drug, be sold legally at all?  
Why should gun makers and gun carriers clutch to themselves the "right" to 
manufacture and possess these weapons--tools whose sole purpose is to kill?

"Thou shalt not kill," reads the commandment.  In the fundamentalist 
Christian churches of our land, how is this clearcut injunction bypassed?  
How do vendors and manufacturers of firearms escape the wrath of preachers 
who so remorselessly condemn adultery and drunkenness?  Who, calling himself 
a Christian, dares disregard this commandment and purchase a gun?

This wrong, this hypocrisy, lies at the bottom of our social problems.
Killing is wrong.
Guns are wrong.
Guns don't defend people; they kill people.
Buying a gun is wrong.
Selling a gun is wrong.
Manufacturing a gun is wrong.
These are clear, self-evident facts.

Self-righteous Puritans in our midst berate alcohol as the root of evil in 
our society--or movie violence, or promiscuous sex, or reckless driving.  
Yet no other item for sale in America, not even cigarettes, bears such a 
threat of fatality with it as does a firearm.

Yet we keep on buying them.  We keep on selling them.  We keep on making 
them.  And if someone calls us to account for the deaths that result, we tar 
him, feather him, and chase him out of town.  Such is the grip of this most 
deadly addiction--gun ownership--on the minds of many Americans.
---Mark Gilley
3/21/2000

On a personal note, Eldon, I deal daily with the results of firearm 
ownership.  I have two clients who lost all sight from being shot through 
the head in random shoootings.  I have a co-worker who lost her son from a 
sudden, unexpected shooting.

Feel free to web-publish this piece.  Or don't, if you find its views too 
extreme.

Regards,
Mark Gilley

This page hosted by Get your own Free Home Page