This week saw another mass murder happen in America. It seems like it has become almost a daily occurrence. This time it occurred in San Bernardino, California. The massacre that happened in Southern California had a few unique attributes and a major controversy has resulted as a result of the killings that took place.

What happened is not so simple to explain. The FBI is trying to sort it out. A major difference in the tragedy was the fact that a woman was involved in the shooting spree. We may find out that the disaster was part terrorism and partly a job related example of violence being perpetrated on his unwary co-workers. The disturbing aspect was that evidently, his future wife, sought him out on a website for lonely Muslim men. The wedding seems to have taken place in Saudi Arabia. She apparently was the source of his radicalization, and readily took part in the shooting of his fellow workers. This factual difference to prior incidents makes it more difficult for our hard working Homeland Security Forces, such as the FBI to protect us, it complicates matters. Some of the details we as the public may never know. Our agencies responsible for our safety will need to deal with this new twist in a strategy designed to kill Americans in soft target locations.

The perpetrators of this mass murder this week were able to buy assault weapons legally. How could this happen?

The controversial aspect that we citizens became shockingly aware of is that we had not prohibited people who are on the terror watch list from being able to purchase a gun legally, and assault rifles at that. This news is shocking! The inaction of Congress on this important issue is scandalous. There is no excuse for their lapse in judgment.The Constitution is not a suicide pact. Congress has to do it’s job. Individual members of Congress should say no to the NRA when it comes to protecting America. No one should be allowed to buy any kind of weapon who is on the terror watch list. It is just plain crazy to do so! The victims families do not need our prayers they need our protection.

As time goes by, and we wait for Congress to act on this one critical issue, let us be kind, and say that the failure to act was an oversight on their part. But frankly I do not think that this was an oversight but rather a situation whereby the NRA put pressure on it’s paid off politicians to ignore what is an obvious problem.

We need to face the facts for once and acknowledge that we have a problem. If you listen to the gun advocates like Senator Cruz , he claims that the bad guys would be dealt with only people are armed. This is nonsense.

Let us look at a few facts. The top 20 states with the highest death by gun ratio, a ratio of the amount of deaths per 100,000 of the population several things become obvious. Number 1, all of the top 20 states allow a purchase of a gun without a permit. The statistics were compiled in 2013.

The state with the lowest rate of death by gun has rules and requires a permit. Hawaii has the lowest figure by far with only 2.6 deaths per 100,000 people. The states with the highest numbers were states with Republican Governors, states of the old Confederacy, and states from the wild west of yore. Alaska led the list with 19. 8, followed closely by Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. The bottom of the top 20 list included states such as Nevada, Arizona, and Utah. Each of the states listed in the top 20 had at least 13 per 100,000 people., deaths by gun.

These statistics prove that carrying a gun does not make you safer but rather the opposite is true, in that if your state has no permit requirement to buy a gun,  your chance of dying by the hands of a gun owner are markedly higher.

The world is not looking favorably upon our murderous society in that a country like Australia is prepared to warn its’ citizens about the dangers of traveling to the United States. Something needs to be done to protect us from ourselves. At a minimum it is disgraceful that we allow people on a terror watch list to buy a gun. We need to put a stop to this reckless and suicidal practice. Our people sworn to protect us can only do as well as we allow them to do. There is absolutely no point to put our protectors at a greater risk by allowing our enemies to legally buy assault rifles .