How Many More Six-Year-Olds Will We Let the NRA Kill?

Another day, another dozen or so dead. A guy on his birthday. Men protecting their girlfriends. A young woman who wanted to be a journalist. A dad. A six-year-old girl who’d gone to the movies with her mom.

And more, closer to home: A killer in Olney. A man shot dead in Germantown. A shooting at a party—five hurt in that one.

Six thousand-plus rounds of ammo, bought via mail order. An assault rifle. Modified with a high-capacity ammo magazine. Of course.

Do you really want to live this way? In a nation where high-school kids get checked every morning with metal detectors? Where colleges have plans for how to notify students of mass murderers on campus? Where moviegoers have to pass through security?

Do you know why we have to live this way? Because of the NRA. Because every time something like this happens, the National Rifle Association buckles down and buys another round of politicians and doubles up on the rhetoric: Guns don’t kill people! What about the Second Amendment? The Founding F’ing Fathers! It’s our God-given right to bear arms!

What about the God-given right to live in peace?

The NRA has some four and a half million members, out of the three-hundred-some million U.S. population. There are a lot more of us than there are of them. Yeah, they’re loud, but we can be louder. All we have to do is put our minds to it.

Tell your politicians: When the NRA brings you money, don’t take it. It’s blood money. It murders mothers, babies, daddies. It puts guns in the hands of people like James Holmes. It causes us to live in fear. Just say no.

This is how good the NRA is: They’ve gotten us to give up the fight. We shrug—another dozen dead. Oh well. No point in taking those people on. They’ll win. They always do. Neither Barack Obama nor Mitt Romney is willing to speak up against the NRA. What does that say about the America we’re living in?

Other countries don’t put up with this crap. People in cities in England and Japan and New Zealand don’t cower indoors at night because they’re terrified of gunfire. No other civilized nation is riddled with guns the way America is.

There are more of us than there are of them. And every day, more are added to our numbers: Americans who’ve suffered loss and sorrow because of guns.

The NRA doesn’t have to win.

But we let them win, again and again and again.

You know why?

Because we think, deep down, that they’re crazy. We know they’re crazy—why else would they oppose a ban on assault rifles? Who could be against a ban on assault rifles, except for people who think it’s vital to democracy that some lunatic be free to shoot up a movie theater? Even though they know it’s happened before? Even though they know it’s going to happen again?

So we have to rise up, right now, and stop them. We’ve got to be brave. We have to take a stand, draw a line in the sand, say “No more! We won’t let the NRA ruin our nation!” Even if they’re crazy—and they’ve got guns.