Another senseless shooting

As did much of the nation, I was horrified and saddened to see two young lives taken by a deranged gunman yesterday. The young reporter and camera man had their entire lives in front of them. Now they will never know the joys of marriage,parenthood, and so many other wondrous opportunities that have been snatched from them.

My next thought was that I wonder when the idiots running our country will begin to bang the drum blaming guns for this killing. That makes about as much sense as blaming spoons for fat people. My first weapon was my thumb and index finger. From there I graduated to a BB gun, and then on to real weapons that could kill. However, before I ever got to the real weapons, I had a father who drilled gun safety into me incessantly.

I grew up in a very politically incorrect generation. We played Cowboys & Indians every day at recess. I also watched Roy Rogers and Gene Autry fire at least 60 shots from a six shooter pistol almost every Saturday at what we called " The Picture Show". However, I never had any difficulty distinguishing between the real and the make believe. When my Dad placed that shotgun in my hands, I knew that it was the real deal, and I had a very real responsibility to handle it with respect and never point it at anything that I did not wish to shoot.

When I look at the many cases in our country of senseless violence and mass shootings, I really don't see guns as the root cause. I see a society where we have a breakdown of the nuclear family. Values that were drilled into me are no longer being taught. Secondly, I see a lot of mental illness that is slipping through the cracks and going untreated. We have plenty of laws on the books, but we have a bloated federal government who can't even enforce the laws that they pass.

The deranged gunman who killed all of the folks in Charleston should never have passed the NICS background search for purchasing a pistol, but he did. The illegal immigrant who had been deported six times yet still killed an innocent young lady in California should never have been in our country. But he was!

I'm old school, and I wish that we could see some old school justice return to our nation. I can assure you that the US citizens of my grandfather's day would not have tolerated what we see on television every day. Justice would have been swift and certain, and some limbs from a bunch of big oak trees would be getting a workout. I guarantee you that we would not have seen as many murderers,rapists, and pedophiles running around in those days.

Have we become a nation of sheep ?I pray that is not the case. As for me, I'm about to do something that I never thought that I would need to do. I've had a concealed carry weapon permit for a long time, but now I'm about to utilize it. I believe that our justice system is a joke, and the bad guys know that even better than I do.