In 2017 36 million Americans filed for hunting permits according to a Google search. One article pointed out that Wisconsin has 600,000 hunters which is more than armies of small countries. No deaths were reported due to hunting in Wisconsin.
In World War II a famous Japanese Admiral said they didn’t invade the U.S. because there was an armed citizen behind every blade of grass.
Our good fortune is that when writing the Constitution’s Second Amendment our founding fathers recognized the value of armed citizens to protect against governing politicians.
The downside however is the gross misuse of firearms by mentally ill individuals (read that men). The latest is the horrific death of 17 innocent students at the Parkland Florida high school with 50 students and faculty wounded. The confessed killer is Nikolas Cruz, a former student who was expelled for various reasons yet to be explained.
As usual Democrat Senators like Bill Nelson, Florida, are already preaching gun control, which would only hurt gun owners, the salt of the earth.
I lived near Melbourne, Florida when Nelson first ran for the Senate.
I was employed by Harris Semiconductor at the time and wrote an unfriendly letter about his uselessness to the Orlando Sentinel, which they published. His wife responded for him: How I could say those things about Saint Bill. He was useless then and still is.
His political platform was to get up on a hayrack with his family and say, “This is mah waf and chilren and our doggie, we call him diggedy dawg.” His audiences loved his down home Southern style.
But somehow someone came up with a winning strategy. Bill isn’t smart enough to have done it. Every street corner on election day had a mother and children with signs promoting Nelson. He won and is still in office. Maybe he still campaigns in the same manner as he did in the 70s.
There is much yet to be learned about the shooter who supposedly was armed with an AR-15 rifle and numerous magazines. He was wearing a gas mask and vest and was smart enough to turn on a fire alarm which caused students to leave their classrooms and flood hallways where he methodically picked them off.
At some point he dropped his weapon and vest and joined fleeing students. Somehow law enforcement recognized him as the shooter and arrested him.
But here is where law enforcement, specifically the FBI, is in trouble.
Two different informants told the FBI about Facebook assertions by Cruz. He said his goal was to become a “professional school shooter.” Although he used his name the FBI claimed they couldn’t find him. In one of the two cases an FBI agent apologized for their screwups.
It is no surprise students and parents blame Washington and the NRA for the gun deaths. I am personally a lifetime member of NRA and resent their stupidity in spite of their youth and the local trauma. Yes, FBI dropped the ball and missed a golden opportunity to prevent bloodshed and some FBI members need retraining or firing. It is probably true their political efforts to undermine Trump had substantially diluted their department. Go lie on the ground in front of FBI headquarters and call it a day.
Meanwhile experts have thrown cold water on the idea of rooting out those mentally ill who may someday murder. The arguments point out that most mass killers are dead either by police action or suicide and aren’t available for study. Well Manson lived in prison for a life time and I never have read about why he was the monster he proved to be. And now they have a live mass killer in jail. Study him, if laws allow it.
