By Joseph Batory

Published in the Delaware County Daily Times April 29, 2023

Gun violence in Philadelphia has sadly become much too common, regularly publicized by the area news media. But this problem extends way beyond Philadelphia. And it has been perpetrated across the USA by an amoral organization, the National Rifle Association via contributions to numerous unprincipled elected officials to ensure that gun control regulations are limited.

Our nation leads the world in deaths by gun violence in the world,  more than eight times higher than the rate in Canada, and nearly 100 times higher than in the United Kingdom. And just in the past 10 months, mass murders by guns have occurred in 15 states.

Tragically, Americans have continued to tolerate this kind of violence through the decades even at schools.  What could have been more of a wake-up call than the gun massacre of children at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut (27 dead and 2 injured) or the gun slaughter at Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida (17 killed and 17 injured).

The Constitution of the United States 200 years ago protected citizen rights to gun ownership so that they could be ready to join the local militia in an emergency. This is an outdated concept that has no relevance to 2023….there are no local militias nor any need for them.

This Constitutional provision has been profoundly distorted by the NRA.  The 2^nd amendment was never meant to be the means for inadequate regulation of gun ownership nor to allow possession of automatic deadly weapons which have no practical use in our society.  The NRA’s pretending mass murders of citizens have nothing to do with the USA’s incredibly lax gun restrictions is propaganda at its worst!

Nearly three decades ago, Supreme Court Justice Chief Justice Warren Burger, a lifelong conservative, called the NRA’s Gun Control interpretation of the Second amendment “one of the greatest pieces of fraud – I repeat, fraud – on the American public … that I have ever seen in my lifetime.”