Good day, America! I’ve come to you today, to talk about America’s latest tragedy, the murderous actions that took place in Las Vegas. The latest reports indicate that 59 people were killed with over 500 wounded. These cowardly murders were perpetrated by Stephen Paddock, a resident of Mesquite, Nevada.

Paddock shot his victims from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Hotel. By doing so it reminded me of another horrific shooting that occurred so long ago, a shooting that was done by a former marine sniper, Charles Whitman. Whitman used the observation post from the Texas Tower, overlooking Texas University in Austin, Texas. On that tragic day he calmly shot and killed 17 people with another death occurring years later but attributed to that fatal day.

In the years since that awful day in Austin, these mass shootings are now occurring more often with the amount of victims seemingly increasing each time. The killings in Orlando, Florida, just a few months ago, held the previous record.

Are these deaths, the price we pay for having the liberty to own a gun or is there a much safer way to deal with the insanity and ever increasing tragedies that Americans are having to deal with, with ever increasing frequency?

In a way it seems futile to talk sense about having reasonable gun laws, because the NRA has bought and paid for enough Congressmen and Congresswomen to make sensible gun legislation impossible. One must ask the question though, of how many innocent lives will it take before the people that we send to Washington pay attention to what the people want instead of their local lobbyist?

We hear about the danger of terrorists. Well, you stand a much greater chance of being hit by lightning in this country than you do being attacked and killed by a terrorist.

Car accidents kill people, a whole lot of people, but we are at least working to eliminate deaths as a result of care accidents by having a car that drives itself and with the technology to stop your car before a collision.

Logic and common sense be damned, no matter how many facts or reasons are mentioned, the Congresspeople that the NRA have bought will not listen to reason so what are we too do? Government first and perhaps its most important responsibility is to keep it’s citizens safe. It is therefore our responsibility to be an educated voter and vote against anyone who is against common sense gun safety laws. Our displeasure with things needs to be translated into votes, other wise we have no one else to blame than ourselves.

Just for the sake of argument let us review for the moment their number 1 argument which is that the Constitution protects gun ownership because the 2nd amendment allegedly gives citizens the right to bear arms. The second Amendment states that” A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a Free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

The amendment quite clearly states that a well regulated Militia being necessary. What militia are we talking about? And how in the world is a man like Mr. Paddock, a well regulated militia. He was clearly not well nor regulated but rather a lone wolf who preyed upon the population and killed a whole bunch of people for no reason.

After Charles Whitman went on a rampage and after President Reagan was shot, we momentarily gained our senses and passed the Brady Bill which did a pretty good job of regulating and controlling the use of automatic weapons. Maybe we had bi-partisan support because President Reagan supported it and we saw the damage that was done to one of Reagan’ s men, that we had such support.

But ladies and gentlemen, the carnage continues whether it is children from a school or young people who went to a country and western concert last night in Las Vegas, innocent people are dying each time this kind of madness happens. When is enough, enough! How much blood needs to flow before we have had enough.

The ball is in President Trump’s court. This is one time that President Trump can do the right thing. It would only take some courage. After all, if President Nixon could go to China, President Trump can simply say enough.