Terrorists proved on September 11, 2001 that guns are not necessary to kill 2753 people. Timothy McVeigh proved that a truck load of explosives can kill 168 people and injure 680 while destroying one third of building and damaging many others in Oklahoma City. A man with a knife killed four people and wounded two others in Los Angeles last week.
A weapon of mass destruction can be a plane, an automobile, a knife, a gun or whatever an evil person chooses to utilize at a certain moment.
By and large the weapon of choice has been an automatic weapon capable of holding a high-capacity magazine. Whether it was Las Vegas, Columbine, Charleston, El Paso, Dayton or sadly too many other locations to name, the weapon of choice has been an automatic rifle with high-capacity bullet magazines. A truck can kill people but normally you can hear and see a truck coming. A knife can kill people but not as many as a rifle with a magazine clip holding 70 or more bullets.
An evil person can walk into a church, theatre, Walmart or school and immediately have a couple of hundred people huddled together as a target. He doesn’t have to aim. He just points the weapon and pulls the trigger. The gun acts like a sprayer of bullets hitting people so fast that running or dodging is almost impossible. The shooter looks for scenarios where people are trapped with limited escape door opportunities. Thus a shooter with a bullet clip of 50, 70 or more has a potential of killing many people in just a minute or less.
This is why Congress must enact background checks, strict licensing for high powered rifles and limit the number of bullets a clip can hold at one time. However, here is the problem. What is the magic number? My ordinary pistols hold six shells and my automatic ones hold more so what is the magic number of bullets that Americans will be limited to in one clip? Will it be 10 or 15 or 20? Honestly, there is no right number because a skilled marksman will still be able to kill. The hope is that maybe the ending of one clip or emptying of one pistol would give someone a chance to tackle the monster if anyone is still alive. Hopefully someone in the room will have a gun and be able to stop the shooter.
I’m for limiting magazine capacity but it won’t eliminate terrorism and mass shootings. It’s a Hail Mary and our Congress has to do something but we have to do more. All gatherings must take security measures. Hollywood and network television has to change. Universal Studios/NBC television is the biggest hypocrite of all. They constantly bark gun control and are negative toward the National Rifle Association while coming out with a movie titled “The Hunt” which is supposedly about liberals hunting deplorables and killing them. This kind of junk is a huge part of the problem. Hollywood, the music industry and video games must dramatically change their tone. Barney Fife in the Andy Griffith show carried a gun but he never made any of us want to kill anyone or hate people.
Guns, knives, trucks and airplanes can all kill and there are many other weapons that will kill massive numbers of people. We can’t eliminate them. Our greatest need is a culture change.
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