Soap Box

Today is Monday, one day after the church massacre in Texas that I don�t even have the words to express the disgust, horror, anger and sadness that I�m feeling.

Was it preventable?

I just don�t know. A lot of people think stronger gun laws would have been effective, but the sad truth is that it was already against the law for this man to own a gun, which is an automatic provision for those who receive dishonorable discharges from the military.

So, as if in so many of these cases, another law wouldn�t have made a difference, and what put an end to his murderous rampage was an ordinary citizen with a legally owned firearm.

America is faced with a problem that, being honest about it, we don�t know how to deal with, and if we don�t stop grasping at straws and pointing fingers we�re never going to find a way to deal with the madness.

Opportunistic politicians rush to judgement to write meaningless laws that would further muddy the waters, and leftist ideologues who don�t know a .22 from a .357 condemn all guns and gun owners, wanting to outlaw all firearms, leaving the villains who obtain their guns illegally to continue the mayhem while ordinary citizens would be left with no way to protect their families.

The same people who self-righteously insist on having sanctuary cities for lawbreakers are the ones who scream the loudest for more gun control, completely ignoring their potential for harboring murderers in their midst.

The overwhelming amount of gun violence is caused by illegal guns, and almost all of those are purchased from unlicensed, street corner dealers or backroom illegal gun brokers, the operative word being �illegal� so the laws are already on the books to bust these dealers and send them away for a long time, so why isn�t the clamor to allow the police to find these people and take them off the street?

Now adequate laws already exist to clean up this situation, so why not start there and work backwards up the food chain to find out which legitimate dealers are allowing these guns to slip out their back door in one way or another.

A lot is said about background checks.

Any legal gun owner - at least in my home state of Tennessee - is put through a background check, not only on the initial purchase of a firearm, but every time you buy another one, and yes, that also covers the gun shows.

You cannot buy a sidearm out of state and even to buy a rifle you have to fill out forms and submit to having your name run through the state and federal files.

If there are unscrupulous dealers who knowingly sell to unethical straw buyers who resell their purchases to unqualified buyers with criminal and mental health records, they should be identified and prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

If there are holes in our gun laws that fail to keep guns out of the hands of violent people, they should be tightened up and executed, but the truth of the matter is that law enforcement has at its disposal every law they need to clean up violent street crime and put a serious crimp in mass murders.

The problem is that we just don�t have the political will to follow through.

For example, look at many of our largest cities, where politicians remove the tools police need to protect the communities and �Let them destroy� attitudes take the place of �Let them protect and serve�.

No wonder our police officer�s lives are constantly in danger.

Then there is the real and ever-present arch enemy of evil, demonic wickedness, imported from the halls of hell and visited upon man by the demented, possessed and radical, where detection is all but impossible up until the commission of the heinous crimes, as in the case of the Las Vegas shooter and the one in the Texas church massacre.

So, what do we do?

I sure don�t have the answers, but using cowboy logic it seems to me it would be a good starting place to enforce the laws we have on the books already, and for the politicians to get out of the way of the people who have to enforce them.

Because the truth is that, until this is done, no amount of legislation, no new gun laws, no matter how stringent, is going to make a dent in the horrible problems America is going through.

What do you think?

Pray for our troops, our police and the peace of Jerusalem.

God Bless America

� Charlie Daniels

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