Another mass shooting . . . as we continue to gut our gun control laws even more

Another shooting massacre, where a mentally disturbed young man took out his vengeance on society.  After it was over, police found 400 rounds of ammunition in his car.   It was in California -- one of our most progressive states -- so Georgia's recent legislative madness of the "guns everywhere" law had nothing to do with it.

Or did it?   Our state borders are very porous, and our cultural mentality knows no boundaries.   We live in an insane gun culture, where the NRA fans the flames of "freedom" and "2nd amendment rights," -- bought and paid for by the the gun manufacturers.  

A large majority of the NRA members, responsible hunters and other gun owners, support some sensible gun control.   The NRA (gun manufacturers) wants to eliminate all regulations.  And  money comes first in this country, no doubt about it.

On the one hand, the NRA tells us that we would be better off with more guns, while many liberals have just given up trying to oppose them and their powerful lobby.  The gun lobby even got the House to pass a law forbidding the CDC to do research on, or even talk about, gun violence as a public health issue.   How is it not a public health issue when these mass, public shootings continue?

But something could be done.   Australia did.

In 1996, there was an awful rampage where 35 people were killed.   And the conservative Australian government did something about it.    Quoting here from a 2012 article in the U.K. edition of Time magazine:

"The then months-old government of conservative Prime Minister John Howard . . . initiated a sweeping set of reforms, even in the face of opposition from allies in Australia’s right wing. The new measures banned the sale and possession of all automatic and semiautomatic rifles and shotguns. Moreover, the government instituted a mandatory buyback scheme that compensated owners of newly illegal weapons. Between 1996 and ’98, some 700,000 guns were retrieved by the government and destroyed. 

"The results have been tangible: A widely cited 2010 study in the American Journal of Law and Economics showed that gun-related homicides in Australia dropped 59% between 1995 and 2006. The firearm-suicide rate dropped 65%. There has been no mass shooting in Australia since the [1996] Port Arthur attack. 

"Americans often argue that their country’s unique political culture and ubiquity of gun ownership make similar anti-gun measures unthinkable. . . .  Yet while the scale is vastly different, the politics ought not be. Like the U.S., Australia is a frontier society built on a rugged, pioneering individualism. . . .  The rhetoric of freedom and liberty is as often voiced by an Australian politico as it is by an American one."

Well . . .   What do you say to this, NRA?   What do you elected officials say?

Australia did it;   we could do it.   The big difference is the power the NRA has over our politicians -- and the relative apathy of the discouraged populace, who feels 'what's the use?'

Ralph