Subscribe
The Daily Grind Video
CLOSE

I have never shot a gun in my life.  Never.  Ok, a water gun when I was a kid, but never picked up a 9mm or glock or a shotgun or even a bb gun.  It is like crack to me.  Don’t ever want to try it.  Not interested in experiencing what it feels like to shoot something that can put someone six feet in the ground.  Sport?  Ok, if that’s what you want to call it…but I wouldn’t rather kick rocks, then sit in a balcony somewhere in the woods and wait for a deer to stand still, so I can put a bullet in its belly.  But, this is my choice and everyone else has the right to make their own.  That being said, I agree with the 2nd Amendment and I agree with the right to bare arms, but technology has advanced a little bit since 1776, and now arms can blow up buildings, not just a deer in the woods.  And now we have police departments in every town, that WE pay for, that are sworn to protect and serve our communities.  So, I think it is safe to assume that times have changed a little bit since our forefathers wrote the Constitution.

And speaking of the Constitution, the Supreme Court just made a ruling yesterday that struck down the right for two suburban towns of Chicago to ban the possession of handguns by their residents, thus giving the right for every American to carry a handgun.  Now, I am conflicted on their ruling as this was much more about State vs. Federal rights, then it was about guns, so I will leave the ruling alone for a moment.  But…over the weekend, just a few miles from those two little suburban towns of Chicago, 29 people were shot in the Windy City.  And a weekend before that, over 40 people were shot with 12 dead and the weekend before that another 40…you get the point.

[pagebreak]I have been to many funerals.  I have looked inside the caskets of the very young who have been taken from us with just one bullet.  I have seen the tears of the mothers, the fathers, the grandparents, the aunts, the uncles, the cousins, the brothers, the sisters, the classmates, the teachers, the pastors, the rabbis, the imams, the neighbors and the strangers.  I have heard the slogans, the chants, the rallying cries of far too many activists trying to save our children from becoming victims to a gunshot.  I have heard the slogans, the chants, the rallying cries of far too many activists who think it is ok to carry a handgun to a speech given by our President or protecting a loophole in our background check system that could allow for a potential terrorist to purchase as many guns as they would like.  We have a broken system and we know it.   And the victims of this broken system are our young people, who are getting killed in record numbers.  And if we stand back and watch this happen, because we are afraid of the gun lobby, we are just as guilty as those that pull the trigger.  This is not about taking away from anyone’s freedom to sit as long as they would like in the woods and point their shiny piece of steele at an animal for sport.   This is about fixing a system that is based on the way people were living in 1776, not 2010.

If there was a President who understood this problem better than any of his predecessors, it would be Barack Obama, for as a community organizer twenty years ago, he walked the same streets in Chicago where many of these shootings are happening.  I urge you, Mr. President, to take a lead on this issue and not pander to the gun enthusiasts.  Mayor Bloomberg, the mayor of my home city, has challen