Yesterday President Trump actually told British media personality Piers Morgan in an interview that AR-15s are used for entertainment. Yes. He said that. He is parroting what the gun lobby is trying to sell to us about the necessity for these weapons meant for war. And coincidentally the President was in Britain, and then in Normandy, to celebrate the 75th anniversary of D-Day where thousands of U.S., British and Canadian troops were shot on the Omaha, Utah and Gold beaches.

Let’s look at Trump’s words from the linked article:

“In London you have stabbings. I read an article…they said your hospital is a sea of blood…Piers, when somebody has a gun illegally and the others [don’t] they have no chance. The bad guys are not getting rid of their guns…The people who obey the laws are sitting ducks. The thing I think about the most is Paris…if there was a gun on the other side.”

Deflect, deflect, deceive, lie, deflect, blame someone else, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah…….

Where is common sense? Inexplicably he also tried to slough off any criticism of America’s public health gun violence epidemic by blaming the British for all the blood running in England from knife deaths. Good grief. You just can’t make this stuff up but this is also the gun lobby’s turning the conversation away from all of the blood running in the streets and homes of Americans from gun violence.

According to the above article knife deaths are up in the UK and so are gun deaths- they are up to 29. America’s are up,too- about 40,000! No comparison.

My brother fought in Viet Nam and was under fire much of the time he was there. He came home with Malaria and now suffers from Parkinson’s Disease and PTSD. He doesn’t think of assault rifles as entertainment. To him they mean death and destruction.

My Dad was a World War ll Veteran. He served in an Infantry Brigade in North Africa and Italy. He rarely talked about the horrors of war but clearly suffered from Panic Attacks. He was involved in a lot of gunfire as they marched over the mountains and into Rome. He did not live long enough to mourn the death of my sister who was murdered in a domestic shooting. I am quite sure he would have been horrified at the proliferation of shootings and mass shootings, some of which were the result of shooters using AR-15s to kill as many people as possible in as short a time period as possible.

We should all be horrified that our President thinks AR-15s are for entertainment when they are weapons that don’t belong in the hands of ordinary citizens, gun rights or not. Did the founding fathers anticipate this kind of carnage when they wrote their infamous and now controversial words? Would they have been able to predict that since 1968 when Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated, more Americans have been killed by guns than all American wars combined? Yesterday was the 51st anniversary of his shooting. I will never forget that awful day as America mourned the shooting death of a second Kennedy brother. I don’t believe he would have been in favor of the sale and use of semi-automatic assault rifles for common use.

(added since first posted) I just ran across this relevant article about gun deaths compared to American deaths on D-Day:

Some 2,501 Americans gave their lives that day, according to historic estimates. Another 1,913 soldiers from other Allied countries also died, bringing the total death toll from the immediate invasion to 4,414.

It took until late April before the number of people killed by guns in the United States in 2019 topped that number, according to data collected by the Gun Violence Archive. (This data excludes suicides.)

This is so stunning that there are really no good words to talk about it.

Let’s take a look at guns used for “entertainment”:

Does anyone remember when a little girl “accidentally” shot and killed the gun range instructor with an Uzi which her parents allowed her to shoot? The man’s family is suing the girl’s family for allowing her to shoot the gun? Did he not have a responsibility to say No to letting a 9 year old shoot an Uzi for fun? Presumably that was for entertainment.

Too many other incidents like this have happened to enumerate here. Guns are not for entertainment. Their sole purpose is to kill animals or humans. That is what they are designed to do.

There are so many other things that people can do for entertainment. Bowling. Movies. Sports. Music. Theater. Playing games with friends. And yes, I get that some like to shoot guns for fun at gun ranges. But the slippery slope has created a gun culture where military style weapons have become common place for just about anyone who wants one. That is not entertainment.

The President is wrong. The gun lobby is wrong. Guns are not their playthings that they can do anything they want to do with them.

It’s been 100 days since the House passed H.R. 8 to require background checks on all gun sales. The Senate companion bill, S. 42 is in limbo because……rights? fear? paranoia? power and influence? campaign contributions?

How about saving lives? Does that figure into any of this. Here is today’s press release from Brady about 100 days passing since the House passed the life saving bill:

In the 100 days since the House passed H.R. 8 in a bipartisan vote:*

10,000 people have been shot and killed;

21,000 people were injured by gunfire;

400 children and teenagers (1-17) were killed in shootings;

800 children and teens were shot in family fire;

6,100 Americans died from suicide with a firearm, with another 1,000 attempting.

A reminder to my readers- this is NOT NORMAL. This is a public health epidemic. The Republicans in the Senate are letting America down. They seem to feel no shame or responsibility when mass shootings occur every week or so and 12 or more innocent people are mowed down for no apparent reason except a gun was readily available. And for the domestic related gun deaths and for the suicides by gun and the little children shooting each other with a gun found at home. They have no conscience.

We are better than this.