When is enough, enough? A Rant

I know, I know, I've been extra preachy lately, but what I see going on in my own country and around the world is so disheartening that I feel moved to comment, complain or even rant.

So what's my latest pet peeve? This gun thing. I don't get it. When will Americans (and I mean people from the USA) finally come to their senses about guns? Yes, I understand that the right to bear arms in written into the Constitution as an amendment, but other amendments have been changed, cancelled or re-amended. (Hello prohibition...I'm talking about you!)

I also realize that "people kill people", but dammit, it's a whole lot easier with a semi-automatic AR-15, if you know what I mean. Why for the love of God, would someone need an assault riffle except to go out and murder people?

Look, I'm from Canada.We have people there that own guns, too: the hunters, the farmers and of course a good selection of whack jobs that can't be trusted with a butter knife, let alone something that sends projectiles towards "targets" at around 1200 kmh (720 mph?). Of course, deaths in Canada by gun is a fifth of the United States, but we have this little thing called gun control.Sure, we're the sweet, polite neighbours to the North, but we (not I) do like our guns. We just don't go around shooting them at people with quite the same exuberance as our Southern neighbours do. 

You can say it's none of my business, that because I'm not from the US, I couldn't possibly understand the deeply ingrained desire to protect this "right", but it is my business. Your guns are finding their way up into Canada and killing my people. I also have loved ones in the US who could easily fall victim to some crazed lunatic wielding a gun, or worse...someone who feels it's their right to shoot someone on sight, because the gun owner "feels threatened". The Stand Fast rule is one of the dumbest things I've ever heard and we're in the middle of an election campaign, so that says a lot.

http://pandawhale.com/post/67753/gun-violence-in-america-in-17-maps-and-charts

The statistics support a more...shall we say...measured approach to firearms.  You are more likely to be shot by your own gun than you are by any other firearm. (Go ahead, search the net and find the stats.)

Why is it so acceptable to have (on average) 85 Americans shot PER DAY? Are their lives less valuable than an amendment that was written to overthrow  a government that imposed a law designed to bend the masses to the will of the crown? News Flash: There is no crown anymore in the US, you have a little something (you like to claim as inventing) called DEMOCRACY that protects you from the very thing the 2nd amendment was put in place for. You can amend the law, that's why it's called an AMENDMENT. 

When are you going to say "Enough"; enough deaths, mass shootings, enough money going to the NRA to fund their deadly agenda? How many toddlers have to shoot their parents (accidentally) or children kill their friends/siblings/gun instructors before you realize that it isn't worth it? That it doesn't work and that you are creating a state of terror that completely out does the reason for having the 2nd amendment. (Remember when people didn't feel safe because they were likely to get shot if they did something the autocrats didn't like...well guess what, that's exactly what's happening again, but it's a problem of your own making and can be easily solved...)

I'm not saying don't have guns at all (although it's not a terrible idea), I'm saying make sure that the people who have them aren't psychotic, depressed, manic, uneducated about their responsibilities of gun ownership and/or generally murderous. And for the love of God, nobody...and I mean absolutely not one single person, needs assault rifles, automatic weapons, grenade launchers etc. It's ridiculous. This should be an age of enlightenment and you're back in the wild west or the dark ages. Shake your heads, pull up your big boy/girl pants and do something about it!