America’s Mass Murders

Columbine High

      We are still playing roaming cowboys in the streets of America. It appears that Americans has a love affair with guns; we are truly paying the price for that love. Not a day passes that local newscasters fail to report that another person has died via gunshots. Young African American males in the inner cities are often the big losers--losing their jobs, their mobility, becoming disabled, and losing their lives.  

      We are loosing too many young African American males by gunfire. Too many innocent women and babies are dying before their time. We must get these automatic and semi automatic hand guns off the streets

        History is cites the deaths of President John F. Kennedy, his brother Robert F. Kennedy, Civil Rights leaders, Medger Evers and the Reverend Doctor Martian L. King Jr., including the devoted Black Muslim leader Malcolm X--they all died from gun shots!

      African Americans have suffered from this violence far too long. Whenever I hear news of a shooting, I hope and pray that it is not a Black man behind the trigger, not an African American male venting his anger. I hope that it is not an African American who is on the receiving end of that fired bullet. 
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      On Monday, April 16, 2007, America witnessed another horrific scene of death this time on an America college campus. This is the recent public massacre at Virginia Tech. Thirty two students and teachers were killed at Virginia Tech University, in Norris Hall. Those killings caused another young African American man and woman not to graduate as the result of a young troubled man with two semi automatic pistols walking into the school building and shooting young, bright, intelligent Hokies. This is not the first time nor will it be the last; however, it is time that we take a serious look at our gun laws. We cannot allow our own shores to be the world’s only self inflicted killing field.

     Twenty three year old loner, American Cho Seung Hui, forced America to review its gun control laws again, but we still do not get the message. Will we ever get the message? There is a trail of blood that should make us think soberly about this issue: In 1966, Charles Whitman went up the University of Texas campus tower with a high powered rifle to shoot students, teachers, and policemen. The still unknown and unsolved Zodiac killer preyed on the Bay Area for many years in the late 60’s and early 70’s, shooting middle age white men in the streets of San Francisco. Many have stated that this was probably an African American male trying to start a race war on the west coast. This mysterious case is still open thirty years later. There are many more.

      John Berkowitz (Son of Sam) terrorized the City of New York in the late seventies. He shot women with long dark or black hair as they sat in their cars romancing the night away with their boyfriends on the streets of the Big Apple.

      The 1993 attacks of Colin Ferguson (A Black man) on the Long Island Rail Road Commuter train, and the attack in 1999 in The California 101 Business Building and Atlanta office murders were committed by fired workers. These events caused many office buildings, and transit buildings to employ armed security guards and affix surveillance cameras on site. The United States Post Office has also witnessed many employees returning to the job site with a gun to eliminate their bosses or supervisors in the 1980 and early 90’s. Making the term “Going Postal”, have a new meaning

      On a bright spring day in 1999, in the Denver Metropolitan Area Columbine High School, America witnessed the worst murder scene in their history at that time. Two young high school outcasts walked on the campus in their signature long black trench-coats and automatic weapons and started spraying classmates with bullets in the school library.   

      All of these events make it clear that it’s too easy to obtain guns; Cho Seung Hui went to a gun store two months before the recent attacks and returned a month later to buy another pistol. He passed all gun registration checks even though the school medical staff labeled him unstable. Maybe it is now time to challenge the Republicans and the National Rifle Association; maybe it is time to admit that hand guns are made to kill people and that semiautomatic and automatic handguns are made to kill people faster; maybe it is time for a national band on these dangerous weapons.

      When our forefathers passed the Second Amendment, the right to bear arms, they meant American citizens in the countryside. This amendment was meant to enable citizens there to defend themselves against wild animals, rebel Indians, and Royal British troops. It was not written for the modern crowded inner cities like New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, or Oakland.

      Other nations around the world have taken the steps to stop this carnage: In 1996 England passed strict hand gun laws after Thomas Hamilton walked into an elementary school in Dublin, Scotland and shot 16 kindergartners.

     That same year Martin Bryant killed 35 people at the historical site in Tasmania, Australia. Within two weeks the Australian government passed stringent gun control laws. In both countries there has not been another incident. In Japan, Korea, and China it is illegal to own or fire a handgun in city limits. The murder rates with handguns are under one percent in those countries, while America’s rate is 25 percent.

     It is time for a change in a positive way.

THAT IS THE GRAYLINE
4-30-07

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