Another day, another massacre.

So, it has happened again.   Another kook armed with an arsenal including tear gas grenades and assault weapons.   This time it wasn’t a Safeway store in Tucson, it wasn’t a beauty parlor in Orange County, it wasn’t a high school or a post office.  No, this time it was a movie theater near Denver where mostly young people gathered to celebrate the opening of the summer’s most anticipated film. 

The aftermath is much the same as we have seen increasingly and repeatedly in the United States.  “What a shock.”  “He was such a nice guy.”  He was so quiet.”  And for the victims’ families, a deep soul searching for answers that likely will never come … not now, not ever.

This morning, I looked back over blogs I have written during the past several years.  There have been a few on this same subject.  Sure, the places where the urban assaults took place are different, but the story is similar.   A man with a gun, usually an assault rifle, sets out to kill other innocent unsuspecting human beings. 

I am also concerned by many of the comments I read online today.   The far right is blaming President Obama for allowing a decay in the moral fiber of America to unravel to the point that such shootings are now common place.   The NRA is staunchly defending the right of the suspect to possess and use automatic assault weapons, one NRA member posting that it is too bad everyone in the theater didn’t have a similar weapon so they could have returned fire.   The NRA is a powerful force that seems to hold Washington at bay, and will go to virtually any length to allow the continued proliferation of deadly assault weapons.  Indeed, some NRA member seems to gloat whenever a shooting like today’s takes place because it affirms that they have been successful in their unyielding efforts to allow killers to own assault weapons.

We’re not talking about muskets here, where you fire buckshot in the backside of an assailant.   We are talking about military grade assault weapons that can be owned by almost anyone. 

I for one am fed up with the NRA and their argument that if all Americans owned assault rifles, we wouldn’t have this problem.  The fact is the vast majority of Americans don’t own any guns, let alone assault weapons.  And other than gang warfare, not once have I ever heard of any case where one assault gun toting American has stopped another assault gun toting American bent on murder. 

It has come time for America to stand up to the NRA bullies.  There is simply no reason whatsoever why any one other than police or military needs to have access to these types of weapons.  Until Americans wake up to that fact, Americans will continue to wake up to more gruesome news where dozens of innocent people just living their lives have fallen victim to another kook with a gun.

An Open Letter to NBC

 

Dear NBC:

I already know that historically, you don’t care a lot about me and a few million of your other viewers who have the misfortune to live here on the West (left) coast.   We rarely get our network news live from you, and when it comes to sporting events, unless it is a Saturday or Sunday, pretty much everything you give us is three hours old.  Yes, we do see that “LIVE, ET” thing that you throw up in the upper right hand corner of the screen.  Meaning, “LIVE” for your viewers in the Eastern Time zone, “SCREW YOU BECAUSE YOU ALREADY SAW THE RESULTS ONLINE” to your viewers in the West (like tonight, watching the time delayed Olympics qualifying from Omaha and San Jose … old news for us in the West).

So, here is a chance for redemption.  During the London Olympics, give us stuff at the same time those on the East coast see it.   I know you want to have the big drama building extravaganza for prime time viewers on the main network, and that’s fine, you can still do that.  But when the events you are showing in prime time for the West coast are so old they have been Tweeted, Facebooked, and posted on every news website online hours before they are broadcast here, it is kind of insulting.

You’ve got the NBC Sports Channel, you’ve got MSNBC, you’ve got  CNBC (yeah, I know, you don’t want to interrupt the stock ticker), so why don’t you show the events live as they happen for all of us to see on those cable channels if you don't want to interrupt regular programming on the main network?  Then, during prime time on the network, wrap it all up in a pretty little package with Bob Costas and the other “NBC Olympics Stars” and redo it all then.  It will be perfect for those who couldn’t see it during the day, and perfect for us West coasters who want to relive the thrill of what happened hours earlier, even if we already saw it.

You know that 52 years ago when CBS carried the 1960 Winter Olympics from Squaw Valley, it was so amazing that even if it was broadcast two days later, it was cool.  But hey, this is 2012.  We have IPhones and we have IPads that give results as they happen. We have bootleg websites from third world countries that stream the Olympics live as they happen and satellite dishes from CTV in Canada that broadcast it live (they realize when sports is happening live, it is an event to be shared then, not on a three hour tape delay).

So step up NBC.  Give it to us live.  We can take it.  But what we can’t take is another Olympics where Bob Costas and the other announcers are overly excited about an important matchup … that took place three hours before we are seeing it.

Thanks for your consideration.

Dan Adams

Palm Springs

PS: I’ll still keep watching KMIR.  The desert’s “trusted” news source.