The church shooting in South Carolina Wednesday night was a tragedy beyond words. The senselessness of this act, and the deep sadness it has caused, has enveloped all of us.
The kid who did it was a sick racist influenced by family and friends and culture in God knows what ways that made him into the person he is.
But that is not all that this horrible act calls on us to think about long and hard. As difficult as it is to put what happened in Charleston in its large context, that is what we must do.
The fact is, what Dylann Roof did proves once again that the retired Canadian defense attorney was so right when he remarked that “America has a long way to go until it becomes the country it thinks it already is.”
Too many Americans continue to delude themselves into believing this wanton violence has nothing to do with the easy availability of guns.
They believe such nonsense in spite of the fact that other nations have sick individuals, racists, radicals, and the like, but do not have mass shootings like this happening virtually every week.
Maybe the citizens of other nations are just better people than we are. But it is also possible that they are just like us, human and flawed and good the same way all Americans are.
If that is the case, then there is another reason violence like this happens here more than anywhere else. I believe that reason is simply that too many Americans refuse to believe easy access to guns has anything to do with these killings.
“Guns don’t kill people,” the NRA says, “people kill people.”
I still hate the NRA. It is the most useless organization this country has ever had or ever will have. It thrives on lies and propaganda, fighting every common sense effort there is to limit the easy access to guns.
The NRA views Americans as idiots, too dumb to understand that there has never been and never will be any danger that the government will take away our guns and enslave us to its will.
That is an NRA myth, and it deserves the scorn of every decent American for perpetuating it.
Easy access to guns is not about the Second Amendment. It is about money.
That is why any politician who misrepresents the Second Amendment and follows the NRA in opposing common sense gun control is showing disrespect to the memory of those who have died in all the mass killings that have been happening for too long in our country.
When you cannot attend a Bible study in your church without the threat of being shot to death, something is very wrong with our society.
At least in part that something is the NRA lie that guns protect people instead of killing them.
So I grieve for the families of those who died in Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church this week, and the families that are still mourning the loss of loved ones in other killings like this, and all killings related to the easy access to guns.
But I also grieve for our nation that continues to believe the myths it tells itself that we are the greatest nation on earth and the last best hope for humankind.
In truth we will never be such a nation, but we could get closer if voters were willing to demand our politicians enact common sense laws that make guns less available than they are now.
And all of us together can tell the NRA to go to hell!
linnposts.com 