Kremer’s Corner: Carnage rises, but NRA unchanged

Jerry Kremer

By any standard, we are living in unique times. 

The Republican and Democratic parties are under stress. The economy is on a roller coaster due to daily surprises like England’s vote to exit the European Union. 

Demonstrations over racial issues are a moral dilemma. Every institution is questioning its direction, with the exception of the National Rifle Association.    

Somehow, the NRA, as the media calls it, just continues to do its thing, protecting the gun manufacturers, in the name of America’s sportsmen. 

Massacre after massacre occurs with high-powered guns and nothing changes at NRA headquarters. 

Little schoolchildren die in Connecticut, innocent moviegoers die in Colorado, and the NRA spouts the same message “we must protect the Second Amendment.” 

The response to the death of five Dallas police officers and dozens in Orlando, Florida is that America needs more guns, not less.

Does the NRA represent all of America’s gun owners?  

Poll after poll of gun owners shows that they strongly favor laws to stop people with mental disabilities from buying any gun, not just high-powered rifles. 

Other polls show that 86 percent of gun owners favor a law to deny guns to people who are on the no fly list. 

Other polls show that the vast majority of gun owners favor efforts to stop the unlimited sale of guns at gun sales.

Poll after poll and tragic story after story; seem to have no impact on the NRA in its blind quest to protect the manufacturers of guns. 

The people who belong to the NRA could well be your friends and neighbors and for the most part are men and women who like hunting for birds and animals. 

If I had a farm in a desolate part of Nebraska, I would want to have a gun in my house to protect me from some rare predator. 

Why should gun dealers sell high- powered killing machines to someone just because they have the money to buy them? 

Should it always be no questions asked when a stranger walks into the store and buys 1,000 rounds of ammunition, a bulletproof vest and other incendiary devices? 

What type of gun does a sportsman need to go bird shooting?

In the face of daily atrocities by some angry person, not only does the NRA stand silent, many members of the U.S. Congress continue to be paralyzed and in fear of the NRA. 

Years and years of political contributions have helped buy that silence along with the threat  of being labeled “soft” on the Second Amendment.  

Many of the House members, who come from safe districts, are scared over the possibility of a primary challenge from an NRA sponsored challenger.

The best example of the strangle hold of the NRA over House members, is the No-Fly No-Buy bill. 

The Democrats have proposed that anyone on the no-fly list should not be able to buy a gun of any kind. They went so far as to stage a demonstration on the floor of the House to highlight the issue. 

The Republican response is that the federal government must go to court to stop a purchaser who is on the no-fly list. The obvious answer is a law that puts the burden on the purchaser to go to court and not the taxpayers paying for a charade. 

Once upon a time, the question was raised as to how many needless deaths must occur until America regains its gun sanity? 

Since that time we have seen the slaughter of both young and old, rich or poor, by mindless killers and nothing happens in the Congress. 

The killings in Paris and Bangladesh have become some far off news story, even though many of the killers have the United States as their next target.   

If ever there was an American tragedy it is the weakness of some of the people we elect and the power of the NRA to stop our country from protecting its own.

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