My Christmas Wish List

Actually I have two Christmas wishes, the first is that my counteroffer to Wayne LaPierre's strident no retreat advocacy of guns on Friday be taken seriously:

The solution is simple, forget about putting armed police in every school: "I suggest putting a teacher in every gun store,"  What can beat a stern teacher with a yardstick watching over the gun guys and gun sellers who skirt the law?  Below are yesterdays covers of the two biggest tabloid Newspapers in the USA, The NY Post, which is owned by none other than Rupert Murdoch and the slightly more liberal NY Daily News....I think I feel a breeze....

My second wish? Look at the real statistics and the reality of the skirting of any real attempt to enforce "background checks" in the sacred tradition of gun show sales in the USA.

In the aftermath of mass murders in Newtown, CT, Aurora, CO, and Clackamas County, OR, several sensible ideas have become topics of public discussion: banning the sale of assualt weapons, banning the sale and ownership of clips that hold more than five bullets, and banning sales of guns to purchasers who have not had a background check.
It's the last of these ideas that I'm writing about here. It's about what's commonly referred to as the "gun show loophole". Although background checks are required for retail sales of guns, they are not required at gun shows.
This obviously makes it easy for convicted felons and mentally ill people to purchase guns. However, another class of people that takes advantage of this are Mexico's narco-terrorists. They simply hire people to purchase assault weapons at these guns shows (usually in Texas and Arizona) for them, then transport them into Mexico.
According to a report issued by the US General Accounting Office in 2009, "While it is impossible to know how many firearms are illegally smuggled into Mexico in a given year, about 87 percent of firearms seized by Mexican authorities and traced in the last 5 years originated in the United States, according to data from Department of Justice’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). According to U.S. and Mexican government officials, these firearms have been increasingly more powerful and lethal in recent years. Many of these firearms come from gun shops and gun shows in Southwest border states."
Current TV aired an expose on this, the Vanguard documentary Arming the Mexican Cartels by Christof Putzel. For the mostly peaceful people of Mexico, this is a tragedy. The number of deaths from the civil war that has been going on in Mexico over the past six years has been at least 57,500, and estimates run as high as 100,000. The parents, children, brothers, sisters, and friends of the people who have been killed are just as unhappy about it as the parents, brothers, sisters, and friends of the of the children killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School. 

I think these are rather reasonable wishes and any sane and responsible gun rights advocate should have no problem granting me my Christmas wishes....Okay, you might have trouble finding  competent teachers who might be able to unholster, aim and fire a gun in the crucial seconds required to stop a felony in a gun store, but well, it works both ways.....
The high-paid employees and the Board of Directors of the National Rifle Association have blood on their hands. Put a stop to unlicensed gun sales in the US, and Mexicans will benefit, too.