Let me try and explain why automatic weapons and the means to modify a weapon into an automatic weapon ( called bump stock) should be banned. In Combat, automatic weapons such as machine guns are the first weapon the infantry on the ground does its best to knock out. Why? Because of its fire power, an automatic weapon can pin down a whole company, stop its advances and inflict heavy casualties until it is knocked out. If caught in the open like the people in Las Vegas, it can kill hundreds in less than a minute.
Banning automatic weapons is really a common sense thing and this writer believes if our forebears who wrote the second amendment were here today would say such a weapon have no place in civilian life. Yes, innocent people who love guns and who would never use them to inflict harm on another person would have to do without. But that happens in all walks of life in a civilized world where laws and regulations are what we live by. Those of us who have any kind of insurance pay a higher rate for other people's accidents. And higher taxes because taxes are not distributed fair and the list goes on and on.
The assault weapons ban put into place under the Clinton administration worked. And it should never have been allowed to expire. Australia passed a National Fire Arms agreement, a law banning automatic and semi automatic weapons after a mass shooting that killed 35 people in 1996. The law included a buy back of such guns and more than 650,000 were bought back and destroyed by 2001 and there has not been a single mass shooting in the country since then.
America is a christian nation that prays, but prayers alone won't stop sense-less acts of mass murder when killing weapons can be acquired so easily. The facts confirm that. The NRA has managed to cancel out much prayer with their campaign contributions to enough members of congress who claim to offer prayers every time there is a mass shooting.
The time has come and in fact is over-due to knock out the automatic weapons that have pinned the country down far to long with its mass killings.
This commentary written by Joe Lorio
