Heartfelt

Running Down the Ridiculous

Heartfelt

By Wilson Nathaniel Thomas

    Let me start out by saying that my heartfelt condolences go out to all of the victims and the families of those who have been affected by the senseless tragedy in Aurora, Colorado. And now with that being said, I have got to move right into this weeks Rundown.

    Every red blooded American ought to be outraged about the slaughter that took place in theater number nine last week. Now let’s just get this straight here, I am not just talking about being outraged because someone made the RIDICULOUS decision to amass more fire power than most police departments have readily on hand at any given time, walk into a movie theater and just randomly shoot person after person. What I am talking about here is why we have allowed our society to become one that makes it easy for these types of tragedies to occur.

    The first thing I uttered to myself when the reports started to flash across my television screen was “Oh my God, I can not believe that this is happening all over again.” I mean it has only been 18 months since Congresswoman Gabby Giffords was shot, and here we go again with yet another mass shooting that has claimed the lives of innocent and unsuspecting Americans.

    There is a movie which stars Justin Timberlake titled In Time. If you have not seen it, you need to, because although it might be one of those futuristic science fiction flicks, it does have some very real sequences in it that we all need to pay attention to. One of the quotes that caught my attention more so than any other was “Many will have to die so that a few of us can live forever.” Basically in the movie time becomes currency, and the rich had millions of years stockpiled while the poor had to wake up every day and do whatever they had to do to acquire enough time just to live out the rest of the day.

    When I think about our brothers and sisters in Aurora, Colorado, I can’t help but ask myself why have we as a nation accepted that it is okay that Americans are being gunned down on the streets every day because there are a handful of people walking among us that have decided that there is plenty of profit to be made off of creating, manufacturing, and selling apparatuses that cause mayhem and bring death to thousands. It is beyond RIDICULOUS that we see these things happening all around us and we mourn, and we grieve with our fellow Americans, yet we do nothing to pre-vent these types of tragedies from happening.

    The people of America need to rise up and let it be known that we are mad as hell at the very thought that for every one of us that is gunned down in a street or in a movie theater, that someone somewhere is lining his or her pockets. We all should be mad as hell about the fact that the NRA (National Rifle Association) is the most powerful lobbying mechanism in the United States, and we have Democrats and Republicans that we have elected to Congress that refuse to stand up to these people because they have taken their money and they are beholden to them.

    The money exchanged between the NRA and our congressional members is so far beyond the pale, the word RIDICULOUS does not even begin to describe what is really going on. Basically we are living in a country that is being held hostage by a bunch of greedy politicians who are now too afraid of the monster that they have created to reign all of the nonsense, so the rest of us get to play a deadly game of Russian roulette every day that we live.

    Let’s be clear about a few things here, the lies that the NRA have spun about the Obama Administration’s attempt to take people’s guns away, are just that, a bunch of lies. In fact the reality of it is that the Obama Administration has done less to get rid of guns than previous administrations.

    Look, I am a gun owner, and I have no problems with people who want to preserve their

2nd amendment rights, but give me a freaking break when folks want to defend the right of people to carry semi automatic rifles that can fire off enough rounds to shoot and kill 50 or more people at one time. Say what you will, but in my opinion, there is no defense of the indefensible. There is absolutely no reason in this world, or any other, as to why anyone should have the right to purchase 600 rounds of ammunition within a 4 month period of time. Common sense should tell the seller that surely a person purchasing that kind of fire power, is not a person that is going out to the back woods to shoot a deer.

    The type of weaponry used last Friday was developed for war zones and it is absolutely absurd that we have elected people that we pay $174,000 each, per year, sitting on Capital Hill defending peoples rights to carry an arsenal fit for war on our streets. Enough is freaking enough, and we have to start holding our politicians accountable, because every last one of them, President Obama included will have the blood of every victim of these crimes on their hands until they grow a pair, and stand for the people of the United States of America, and not the gun manufacturers and the NRA.

    We would love to hear from you here at the Rundown, so please send your questions and comments to runningdowntheridiculous@gmail.com.