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The shooting rampage Sunday at the Wisconsin Sikh Temple outside Milwaukee has got to prompt serious soul-searching about our out-of-control gun policies in this country.

Although President Obama's timely words of condolence strike the right note, once again the President did not seriously address the main problem: that the floridly psychotic, violent racists, and anyone else who attends a gun show or chooses to order thousands of rounds of ammunition online, has easy access to weapons like the two semiautomatic handguns the temple gunman apparently used.
This is not a hunting issue. It is not an issue of self defense. It is a question, as the President himself put it after the horrible massacre in a Colorado movie theater, of whether automatic weapons belong in the hands of soldiers, or of anyone who cares to use them.
It is, as Mitt Romney put it when he signed an assault weapons ban as governor of Massachusetts, a question of whether we allow easy access to weapons that have no other purpose than to hunt and kill people.
Neither President Obama, Mitt Romney, nor the leaders of both political parties in Congress will take up legislative solutions: renewing the federal assault weapons ban, the Brady Bill, or, Senator Lautenberg's common sense proposal to ban the sale of magazines that fire off more than ten rounds at a single trigger squeeze.
That is because both parties are hostages of the NRA ( See 'Time to Stand Up To The Gun Nuts')
But the American people owe nothing to the NRA. People of good will and common sense have to come together to put an end to the insanity and protect our basic right to live in a country where innocent people are not routinely gunned down in movie theaters and places of worship.
Enough is enough.
The idea that nothing can be done, or that the answer is more guns in the hands of more would-be vigilantes, is an obvious lie.
We have to stand up to this evil. How many more of these tragedies can we allow?
Dear Common Dreams reader, It’s been nearly 30 years since I co-founded Common Dreams with my late wife, Lina Newhouser. We had the radical notion that journalism should serve the public good, not corporate profits. It was clear to us from the outset what it would take to build such a project. No paid advertisements. No corporate sponsors. No millionaire publisher telling us what to think or do. Many people said we wouldn't last a year, but we proved those doubters wrong. Together with a tremendous team of journalists and dedicated staff, we built an independent media outlet free from the constraints of profits and corporate control. Our mission has always been simple: To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. Building Common Dreams was not easy. Our survival was never guaranteed. When you take on the most powerful forces—Wall Street greed, fossil fuel industry destruction, Big Tech lobbyists, and uber-rich oligarchs who have spent billions upon billions rigging the economy and democracy in their favor—the only bulwark you have is supporters who believe in your work. But here’s the urgent message from me today. It's never been this bad out there. And it's never been this hard to keep us going. At the very moment Common Dreams is most needed, the threats we face are intensifying. We need your support now more than ever. We don't accept corporate advertising and never will. We don't have a paywall because we don't think people should be blocked from critical news based on their ability to pay. Everything we do is funded by the donations of readers like you. When everyone does the little they can afford, we are strong. But if that support retreats or dries up, so do we. Will you donate now to make sure Common Dreams not only survives but thrives? —Craig Brown, Co-founder |
The shooting rampage Sunday at the Wisconsin Sikh Temple outside Milwaukee has got to prompt serious soul-searching about our out-of-control gun policies in this country.

Although President Obama's timely words of condolence strike the right note, once again the President did not seriously address the main problem: that the floridly psychotic, violent racists, and anyone else who attends a gun show or chooses to order thousands of rounds of ammunition online, has easy access to weapons like the two semiautomatic handguns the temple gunman apparently used.
This is not a hunting issue. It is not an issue of self defense. It is a question, as the President himself put it after the horrible massacre in a Colorado movie theater, of whether automatic weapons belong in the hands of soldiers, or of anyone who cares to use them.
It is, as Mitt Romney put it when he signed an assault weapons ban as governor of Massachusetts, a question of whether we allow easy access to weapons that have no other purpose than to hunt and kill people.
Neither President Obama, Mitt Romney, nor the leaders of both political parties in Congress will take up legislative solutions: renewing the federal assault weapons ban, the Brady Bill, or, Senator Lautenberg's common sense proposal to ban the sale of magazines that fire off more than ten rounds at a single trigger squeeze.
That is because both parties are hostages of the NRA ( See 'Time to Stand Up To The Gun Nuts')
But the American people owe nothing to the NRA. People of good will and common sense have to come together to put an end to the insanity and protect our basic right to live in a country where innocent people are not routinely gunned down in movie theaters and places of worship.
Enough is enough.
The idea that nothing can be done, or that the answer is more guns in the hands of more would-be vigilantes, is an obvious lie.
We have to stand up to this evil. How many more of these tragedies can we allow?
The shooting rampage Sunday at the Wisconsin Sikh Temple outside Milwaukee has got to prompt serious soul-searching about our out-of-control gun policies in this country.

Although President Obama's timely words of condolence strike the right note, once again the President did not seriously address the main problem: that the floridly psychotic, violent racists, and anyone else who attends a gun show or chooses to order thousands of rounds of ammunition online, has easy access to weapons like the two semiautomatic handguns the temple gunman apparently used.
This is not a hunting issue. It is not an issue of self defense. It is a question, as the President himself put it after the horrible massacre in a Colorado movie theater, of whether automatic weapons belong in the hands of soldiers, or of anyone who cares to use them.
It is, as Mitt Romney put it when he signed an assault weapons ban as governor of Massachusetts, a question of whether we allow easy access to weapons that have no other purpose than to hunt and kill people.
Neither President Obama, Mitt Romney, nor the leaders of both political parties in Congress will take up legislative solutions: renewing the federal assault weapons ban, the Brady Bill, or, Senator Lautenberg's common sense proposal to ban the sale of magazines that fire off more than ten rounds at a single trigger squeeze.
That is because both parties are hostages of the NRA ( See 'Time to Stand Up To The Gun Nuts')
But the American people owe nothing to the NRA. People of good will and common sense have to come together to put an end to the insanity and protect our basic right to live in a country where innocent people are not routinely gunned down in movie theaters and places of worship.
Enough is enough.
The idea that nothing can be done, or that the answer is more guns in the hands of more would-be vigilantes, is an obvious lie.
We have to stand up to this evil. How many more of these tragedies can we allow?