gun violence – The Progressive Midwesterner

God Isn't Fixing Gun Violence - NY Daily News Cover — December 3, 2015 cover of the *New York Daily News* (image courtesy of New York Daily News)

Earlier today, a mass shooting took place in San Bernardino, California. The mass shooting occurred at the Inland Regional Center, a facility for people with developmental disabilities in San Bernardino, California. As of the writing of this blog post, at least 14 people were killed by the perpetrators of the mass shooting.

This is yet another example of lax gun laws in this country allowing people with violent intentions to carry out a mass shooting in America. As someone who has a developmental disorder (Asperger’s syndrome), I find it sickening that a mass shooting was carried out at a place designed to help those with developmental disabilities.

At the other end of the country from San Bernardino, in the New York City metropolitan area, the cover of tomorrow’s New York Daily News will feature the headline “GOD ISN’T FIXING THIS”, as well as tweets from three U.S. Senators who are seeking the Republican presidential nomination (Ted Cruz (R-TX), Rand Paul (R-KY), and Lindsey Graham (R-SC)) and U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI). As an atheist, I fully understand that prayers aren’t going to do a damn thing to prevent mass shootings in this country. Only implementation of common-sense gun safety and gun control measures, such as universal background checks on all gun sales, closing the gun show loophole, and banning the sale of assault weapons will prevent mass shootings from occurring in this country.

Losing ground in recent Democratic presidential primary and caucus opinion polls, Hillary Clinton is trying one last thing to save her campaign from falling behind the Bernie Sanders campaign in the opinion polls in even more states. She’s proposing ending the gun manufacturers’ legal immunity from lawsuits every time someone uses one of their products for its intended purpose of killing a person or other living thing (such as a deer or a rabbit).

Make no mistake about it, gun violence is a serious problem in this country. We have far more mass shootings in this country than any other country, and, to put it mildly, it is a problem that needs to be addressed. I strongly support common-sense gun safety measures like universal background checks, closing the gun show loophole, and enacting a ban on assault weapons outside of the military, and these are all measures that Bernie Sanders supports. However, I cannot reasonably support completely eliminating legal immunity for gun manufacturers for reasons I will explain in the following paragraph.

I live in a region of Illinois that has a lot of deer hunters. While I’m not a hunter myself, and I’d never use a firearm for any reason, I can tell you for certain that Hillary’s plan to allow people to sue gun manufacturers every time some jackass decides to use a gun for its intended purpose of killing someone would put gun manufacturers in this country completely out of business, at least in regards to the civilian market. Without anyone to manufacture guns for the purposes of deer-hunting, downstate Illinois would lose a large part of its economy if Hillary were to get her way.

I thank Bernie Sanders for standing up and opposing the ridiculous idea of ending lawsuit immunity for gun manufacturers. He’s a real friend of rural America.