IN BED WITH A COLT FORTY-FIVE SEVEN

"OH, DO ME GUN LOBBY". "I'M DIING YOU REPUBLICAN PARTY." "DO ME HARDER." "I'M DING YOU AS HARD AS I CAN." "OH, YES. FIRE 'UM AS HARD AND AS RAPIDLY AS YOU CAN." "ALL RIGHT. JUST KEEP MAKING SURE NO LIBERAL BLEEDING HEART GETS IN OUR WAY." Some may think this bit of dialogue is a bit extreme, and perhaps it is. BUT, it does illustrate the point of how in bed with the gun lobby The Republican Party is. There is a mass shooting somewhere in this country almost every week it seems. Something that I heard from the news paper this evening basically said that more people die of gun violence in the United States every year than in the entire rest of the world combined, except obviously where there are active military conflicts, the precise numbers and countries escape me at the moment, but that is basically what it amounted to. Yet, every time there is a mass shooting, The Nut Case Rebellious Anarchists (very clever to drop the C so people would believe it stands for National Rifle Association, but I at least am clever enough to see through this smoke screen) make such a ruckus against the prospect of any kind of reasonable restrictions on gun purchases, such as Universal Back Ground Checks, that nothing gets done. If the entire Republican Party were not practically literally IN BED with the Gun Lobby, this would not be the case. No one is really talking about taking guns away from people who have no history of criminal activity or mental illness and use them in a lawful manner. We are just saying that we should be sure all sales at gun shows should have back ground checks, even those from private dealers, and if you can afford to set up a booth in a convention center, yo can afford a back ground check machine. What people choose to do in their own homes, short of shooting others or aiming a gun at others except in self defense, is of course their own business. But anyone who says that all dealers at an Official Gun Show, even private dealers, should not be required by law to do a background check for all purchases is by definition a lunatic and should be locked up and the key destroyed. That is how I know that it is really NCRA, and everyone agrees nut cases should be locked up.