One Final Comment...

Sometime next week the president will forward his gun control proposals on to the hallowed halls of congress.  There they will be buried in committees; lost among the clutter of politics and self interest.

  Will our elected leaders have the political courage to take on the gun violence epidemic that has permeated our society?  Doubtful!  No profiles in courage here.  It will be up to the president to keep the debate alive.  If not for him we fear that the faces of the Sandy Hook victims will fade from our collective memories; just like the victims of Aurora, Tucson, Virginia Tech and Columbine before them.

We are told that this time it is different.  We are told that the massacre of 20 six year old children will steel our resolve and move us to make hard choices.

We hope so!

But even if that is true, it will be months or even years before we see any meaningful attempt to curb the gun violence in this country.

So before we leave this topic allow us to make one final comment on the subject.

In the month following the Sandy Hook shooting 900 American citizens died as a result of gunshot wounds…

…900 dead in 30 short days.

More Americans died from gunshot wounds on our city streets last month than did American soldiers fighting the war in Afghanistan last year.

That is a frightening statistic.

So we have a choice as a society.

We can get the guns off the streets.

Or we can be a society where a mother carries her infant on her hip and her AK-47 on her shoulder.

We don’t want to live in an armed camp.

To those who say that any restrictions on guns are a violation of their constitutional rights we say this…

…We have rights too.  We have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  Your interest in saturating the country with weapons threatens our lives and your unwillingness to even consider the most basic in gun safety measures makes us very, very unhappy.