There’s a reason our founding fathers put an ironclad separation between the state and the military.
“I believe that our Constitution affords responsible Americans the right to own guns, but we need to keep dangerous people from having easy access to guns. Felons, domestic abusers, even known terrorists can buy a gun here without something as simple as a criminal background check. This has to stop,” retired Marine Brig. Gen. Stephen Cheney said in a statement. “Our laws don’t support responsible gun ownership, and far too often guns fall into the hands of dangerous, irresponsible people.”
And, Gen. Cheney, when you tell us how it is that background checks will stop criminals, by all means let us know.
And if there’s any talk of “terror watch lists”, clearly you didn’t know much about that “Freedom” stuff you were sworn to defend. Sorry, Generals McCrystal and Petraeus; your input is not required, here.
Background checks might have at least slowed the perpetrator if (a) the FBI had found enough information to do something in previous investigations and (b) they’d put him on the no buy list. We know the answer to b is “no”, the question is whether they should have found “yes” to a.
Separation of Church and State – not a bad idea either:
Pope Francis Lashes Out Over Access to Arms
Pope Francis on Monday lashed out at the “brazen” freedom with which weapons circulate in the world when compared with numerous obstacles to distributing aid.