Today marks the fifth anniversary of the soul-crushing massacre of 20 innocent small children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT. There was anger and hope in the immediate aftermath of the slaughter that better gun safety laws -- expanded background checks, limits on magazines, etc. -- would be passed by the Rethuglican Congress. The National Rampage Association even hid in shame and went silent for weeks after the mass killing ("now's not the time" was their refrain). Then....nothing happened, as the coin-operated Rethugs in Congress declined to pass any meaningful measures to limit the kind of slaughter that was witnessed at Newtown. Now, even after the killing of 58 and the wounding of an astounding 546 country music concertgoers in Las Vegas on October 1, nothing is happening to outlaw the sale of "bump stocks" which turn semi-automatic assault rifles into fully automatic ones, and which were used in the Las Vegas massacre.
We can do at least two things: first, never forget the victims and celebrate their lives, and second, vote to remove those that take their orders from the gun manufacturers lobby instead of the American people, and for those who will work to protect the public from this insanity.
(photo: Shannon Hicks, Newtown Bee)
