Killing Machines Don't Help Anyone.

     Until Americans step up to accept and promote dramatic change in our culture, we’ll continue to be comfortably numb toward gun violence.

     That is, until the bullets knock on your door.

     What arguably started at Columbine in 1999 has actually become an epidemic in 2013 of Newtown proportions. There were sixty mass killings across the country between those two tragic events, and Congress talking the same nonsense.

     More gun laws. An assault weapons ban. Arming teachers in our schools.

     Think those ideas will work in Chicago where 503 murders took place in 2012 and forty-two murders have already taken place in January of this year?

     They aren’t working right now. A sixty-five year-old Vietnam veteran is holed up with a five-old boy he has taken hostage in a bunker down in Midland City, Alabama. The suspect had shot and killed a school bus driver in front of twenty-one children who’d fled for safety. Police are trying to negotiate for the boy’s safe release.

     Is there any law that would indeed have prevented this situation?

     Local folks have gathered outside the Midland City Town Hall to sing “Amazing Grace” in support of the boy's safe release and family.

     We need a whole lot more “Amazing Grace” here in America.

     Fifteen year-old Hadiva Pendleton was shot and killed a mile away from her school just days after performing at President Barack Obama’s Inauguration Event recently. She was killed in a Chicago park a mile away from her school by random gunfire. Obama owns a house in the affluent neighborhood less than a mile away. Pendleton was an honors student.

     Chicago has some of the most stringent gun laws in the country, say experts. That hasn’t stop the criminals, though. They can travel to Mississippi and purchase killing weapons at gun shows without dealing with background checks. In fact, thirty-three states in the U. S. don't require mandatory background checks at gun shows. Gun manufacturers continue to pour lobbying funds at federal and state officials for those Second Amendment rights to grow. The Second Amendment under the Constitution allows folks to bear arms and defend themselves. There is nothing written about game-killing other human beings in that document that I know of.

     Do you want freedom? Whose freedom? Nine year-old Christina Green had paid the ultimate price for hers two years ago. She now has a softball complex named in her memory. The third-grader was one of six people gunned down at former U. S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords’ public speech in Tucson, Ariz. Giffords was shot in the head and survived to speak three short sentences before Congress last week. It was deeply moving, troubling, and unfortunate her wounds have left Giffords sounding like a third-grader at the public hearing.

     While Giffords testified before Congress, a gunman walked into a Phoenix office and shot three people. Two eventually died. The following day, Mark Hasse, Assistant DA in Kaufman County outside Dallas, was shot and killed while getting out of his car for work at the courthouse parking lot.

     After watching dozens of YouTube videos on gun violence combined with countless gun laws articles I'm aware of the complexity of the issue. Now I’m afraid to leave the apartment. I close the windows tightly and lock the doors at night. Four blocks away, a teenager had been murdered at a grocery store last month.

     Is it a lack of civility in society? Violent video games captivating young innocent minds? Blood and guts on television selling commercials for the almighty dollar? A lack of discipline and authority in the home today?

     All of the above. But there is more. Mental health, unemployment, ongoing cuts in social services, and the lack of prosecution of violent offenders in our courtrooms are leading us toward our own demise. It’s a rapidly growing national epidemic.

     Ladies and gentlemen, we are dying left and right at the hands of our own guns. We don’t need another war with a hostile country. There are enough weapons in the United States to arm everyone.

     If the American people do not take matters into their own hands, our society will turn into the Wild Wild West again in no time. Get ready. It’s coming.

     Last year there were 5,000 gun shows in the country. Opinions on what to do next range from Newtown parent Mark Mattioli, whose son was one of twenty children who died at Sandy Hook Elementary School by a lone gunman, said, "It is a simple concept. We have a lack of civility across our nation."

     Yet, NRA Chief Executive Wayne LaPierre counters with his criticism of President Barack Obama's administration stating, "I don't think you can trust these people."

     Each and every adult in America has a civic duty to get involved in some way. The first step is your local government. You can take an active role into the safety and vibrancy of your own community. But you have to make a sacrifice and take a step.

     Or you can sit back and wait for the next nearby tragedy. Have your cell phone handy with the 911 code ready and waiting. It may not be a long wait.