Published On: Fri, Sep 6th, 2013

Guns on the Barbie?

By: Michael H. Gora

A couple of days ago I caught a flash on my computer’s internet news page that a Georgia public school in an Atlanta suburb had been invaded by yet another crazy SOB with an AK47.

Having three grandchildren attending school in that general vicinity I started flipping from one new source to another, finally, about a minute later I learned that the school involved was not that of my Savannah, Shana, or Rebecca.

Over the last few days the culprit was described as a mentally sick young man who had borrowed or stolen a friend’s AK47  (doesn’t everyone have one or want one?) He had entered to office section of the school with his gun and 498 bullets.

Fortunately he was quickly discovered and did not have the skills he could have gained by attending one of the many NRA endorsed gun range facilities located within a few miles of any home in suburban America.

Since this sick puppy had not bought the gun at a licensed store or less regulated weekend gun show there was no law which could have identified him as a crazy with an AK47 and a wish to kill children he did not even know, and with whom had no gripe.

So there is no “All American” way to protect our children, elderly parents, or ourselves from a nut or a deranged jealous husband from killing our loved ones and friends with equal abandon.

Let’s become Australians!  Australia, the closest doppelganger to our own Wild West culture; where men were men and women carried guns too.  (Note the past tense.)

This gun toting country/continent had banned guns, state by state.

On April 28, 1996, six weeks after John Howard was elected Prime Minister, Martin Bryant, a psychologically disturbed man, used a semiautomatic Armalite rifle and a semiautomatic SKS assault weapon to kill 35 people in a murderous rampage in Port Arthur, Tasmania.

Within a couple of years, not without objection, reviews say that gun ownership was virtually banned from coast to coast in this country of large metropolitan areas separated by rural frontiers larger than our own.

Gun deaths by murder, accident, and suicide plummeted into oblivion.

Are we to be denied this safe alternative because of the intentional misinterpretation of a badly written portion of our otherwise lovely Constitution and a very profitable business disguised as a not for profit, the NRA?

There seems no way to adopt the Australian solution, but we can put some more shrimp on the barbie, and open a cold one as we await the next massacre at our own neighborhood school.

Michael H. Gora, Boca Raton Divorce lawyer, has been certified by the Board of Specialization of The Florida Bar as a specialist in family and matrimonial law, and is a partner with Shapiro Blasi Wasserman & Gora P.A. in Boca Raton.  Mr. Gora may be reached by e-mail at mhgora@sbwlawfirm.com.

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