Will
probably assure swift passage of RI gun control bills and aggravate Blake Filippi
and Jim Mageau
By
Will Collette
 |
| Alleged shooter Dimitrios Pagourtzis |
Raise
your hands if you thought there wouldn’t be another school massacre like the
one in Parkland, Florida?
Raise
your hands if you think drugs are a bigger problem than gun violence? Ah, is
that beloved Charlestown
curmudgeon Jim Mageau with his hand raised?
Raise
your hands if you think it’s wrong to take guns away from lunatics and maniacs?
There’s Mageau again, and he’s joined by Charlestown
state Representative Blake Filippi.
The
body count in this country may have reached the point where even the NRA’s
mountains of Russian money can no longer buy off American politicians.
Evidence
of that is the “fast-tracked”
impending passage by the Rhode Island General Assembly of bills to ban “bump-stocks”
that can convert an assault rifle to full automatic and for the Superior Court
to order the seizure of a dangerous individual’s guns.
Passage
of those bills seems more certain and perhaps with more speed after today’s
horror at the Santa
Fe High School outside of Houston, Texas.
The
suspected shooter is 17-year old Dimitrios
Pagourtzis who displayed an apparent interest in neo-Nazi paraphernalia.
Now
watch for a new torrent of Letters to the Editor of the Westerly Sun by Jim
Mageau (like
this one), insulting and denouncing anyone who thinks sensible gun control
is a good idea.
And
watch for Blake Filippi to say, “yes, but,” raising concerns about gun owners’
due process rights, as if they outweighed the growing pile of dead school
children.
I
am sick of it. I am sick of “thoughts and prayers.” I am sick of the rhetoric
from the likes of Mageau and Filippi.
It
is long past time to re-institute the ban on military-style assault weapons, a
ban that Congressional Republicans allowed to expire.
I
don’t believe any civilian, whether an avid hunter, a gang-banger or a
homicidal maniac, should be able to legally buy and own weapons that were
designed for no other purpose than to kill people.
Why
do we continue to make it so easy for bad guys to kill so many people so quickly,
whether it’s school children, their own families or innocent bystanders on the
street?
I
am fine with measures such as the anti-bump stock and “Red Flag” bills, to
universal background checks, to a ban on private and off-the-books sales, and
to ban high-capacity magazines. I am fine with public education campaigns.
But
we need to stop dancing around the most obvious thing we need to do: Ban
military-style weaponry.
