Gun violence can be solved if we want to do it

No one, and I mean no one, needs to own an assault rifle. They also do not need to own any semi-automatic weapon, especially one that can be converted into a fully automatic weapon. They have no use for hunting and if gun collecting is your thing, then collect ones that have been made nonoperational and put it on display in a sealed glass case.

It is safe to say the gun owners who claim it is their constitutional right to own them are not part of any well-regulated militia so it can be argued those who are not in one do not even have the right to own a gun (Read the Second Amendment, it’s just 14 words).

If you really live in a rough neighborhood and feel you need to own a gun for protection, you will be willing to be required to be tested at least annually on your ability to fire, handle, store, and care for a gun and pay an annual licensing fee. You would also be willing to undergo an annual psychological test to show you are still of sound mind to own the weapon you have. This is not infringing on your rights, just merely making sure you are worthy of gun ownership.

Hunters should be willing to do the same.

If your job requires you to use a semi-automatic or automatic weapon, it should be supplied by your employer and you should be required to check it out at the start of your shift and turn it in at the end. The same with the bullets or magazines it requires. When off duty, it is just you and the gun you have purchased and kept up like any other citizen.

It does not take courage to make these requirements the law of the land, just common sense and enough love for your fellow man to not want to make it continually easy for people to shoot up schools, churches, concerts, or malls. So what if it leads to fewer gun sales and eats into the profits of the gun makers. Their wealth is nothing more than blood money as long as we do nothing to curb the gun violence that plagues this country. I prefer to support the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness of our children over our gun industry.

As a voter, I will never vote for any ass hat who claims the issue is about mental health. It is if you are talking about the mental health of a politician who claims to be pro-life and then supports laws that benefit gun manufacturers. The politicians who do this are clearly sick individuals and have no business representing the people of this country. They need to go and it cannot happen fast enough.

These are also the same politicians who have voted to cut funding for insurance to cover the cost of mental health while also eliminating funding to mental health programs. They will bail out a gun manufacturer, make it easier to purchase and sell guns, and fail to pay the bill to hire enough people to do all the necessary background checks just so they can continue to rely on the gun vote and donations from the major gun companies.

It may not be realistic to collect all the guns in private hands for the time being, however, our government can and should tax the hell out of people who want to own the guns they have. Annual registration fees should cost gun owners no less than $1000.00. If beer bottles have a CRV for each bottle sold, there should be a federal tax on each bullet at no less than a 25 percent rate.

The same for the tools, equipment, and materials used to make your own bullets. If cigarettes and booze get hit with sin taxes, anything to do with guns including the rags and oil used to clean them with should be taxed to death because there is no greater sin than seeing a child murdered due to the complacency of a gun owner or our Congress.

It is not possible for any government to keep someone from suffering the type of mental illness that drives a person to shoot up a school. At best, they can do more to make services affordable and available for the mentally ill.  However, a government can do a lot more than what ours is currently doing to make it more difficult for guns to be owned.  Simply put, the more hoops an aspiring owner has to jump through and pay for will in itself result in fewer gun purchases. Add to it much stiffer penalties for illegal sales or simply failing to secure a gun that ends up stolen, and in time, we see a huge decline in private gun ownership.

However, for any of this to happen, it means we have to admit as a nation we have a huge gun problem and the little band aid fixes that are proposed from time to time will do nothing to stop the hemorrhaging this nation experiences every time there is another mass shooting.

It’s really simple, you either love guns more than the lives of innocent children or you value their lives enough to allow us to enact real gun legislation.

Top and last photo are YouTube screenshots