This commentary is by Bob Stannard of Manchester, an author, musician and former state legislator and lobbyist.
I’m goin’ down
Down, down, down, down
I got my big feet out the window
And my head’s hangin’ on the ground — Don Nix
I’m trying to remember when times were easy. I guess when I was a little boy and didn’t have a care in the world, times were pretty great, but that was only because I didn’t know better.
My dad went to work at his father’s plumbing company, while mom stayed home and raised three boys. Dad’s take-home pay was $110 per week and we lived pretty well. It wasn’t until I was a teenager that we could afford to buy a new car. Dad built our house for around $7,000. Gas was cheap and living was easy; maybe too easy.
Everyone I knew growing up had guns. Our fathers taught us how to use guns and how not to use them. There were some stiff penalties for misusing firearms, as in you were never going to use them again, ever. We were taught to be responsible and independent. If you couldn’t do it, no one else was going to do it for you. You were charged with figuring stuff out on your own. At least I was, but I don’t think that I was raised much differently than the kids I grew up with.
I am not implying that we were saints; not by a long shot. If we stepped out of bounds (which we did often), the challenge was not to get caught.
On Aug. 1, 1966, a man named Charles Whitman gained access to the observatory of the Tower at the University of Texas where he proceeded to rain bullets down on unsuspecting citizens. I had just turned 15 years old. Prior to this date, there was no such thing as a mass shooting — an event in which at least four people are killed. It was unthinkable.
I had been hunting on my own for a few years. When I heard the news of what happened in Texas, I worked really hard to get my head around what would cause someone to randomly kill people he didn’t know and just shoot them down like he was target practicing.
Was he mentally ill? Did he have a rough childhood? I grew up with some kids who had it a lot rougher than me. I knew kids who by today’s standards could be considered mentally challenged, but I never knew anyone who was capable of doing what Mr. Whitman did.
Every kid who has ever lived gets mad at their parents, or a friend or a girlfriend. That’s not news. What is news is when that anger escalates to the point where an individual believes that he/she must get their hands on a gun and go out and shoot people.
I was taught that the only time the killing of a human being is acceptable is during war or in an act of self-defense. If it’s the latter, you had to be damned sure that your life was in imminent danger.
Something’s happened along the way. Maybe Whitman began a trend that has never ended. What is clear to most folks is that if guns were not readily available, then there would be fewer mass shootings. Duh.
However, those who are considered to be our leaders have chosen to hide behind the amphibological Second Amendment and have opted to not do anything to address gun violence in America for over five and a half decades.
Former President Bill Clinton banned AK-47s, but that ban had a sunset of 10 years. When the 10 years were up, our leaders decided that the time was right to allow people to buy these unnecessary weapons of war again.
The results have been staggering, and not in a good way.
Perhaps one of the more disturbing actions the mostly Republican members of Congress have taken is to hamstring the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
“We have an agency that has the power to protect Americans and we are not funding it, we are not supporting it and we have done outrageous things to it.” — U.S. Sen. Cory Booker.
You can’t gut the agency that is tasked with protecting us from people with dark hearts and bad intentions and expect the shootings to decrease. According to David Chipman, who was appointed by President Biden to head up the ATF but rejected by the Senate, the ATF cannot, by law, get help from any other agency. It can never merge with another agency. There are over 130,000 stores that sell guns, but only 500 ATF inspectors. Any requests for additional funding by the ATF has been rejected.
There are laws on the books for human trafficking, but no laws on the books for gun trafficking. The ATF has asked that a QR code be put on all guns so that they can be tracked. This idea was shot down by Congress.
We cannot expect to see mass shootings decrease and/or come to an end in America when we have leaders who for 50 years have chosen to bury their heads in the sand while families bury their dead.
