The Nevada Massacre

The massacre of over 50 people in a Nevada hotel by one man with an automatic rifle is due entirely to the Nevada gun laws or lack thereof. Nevada has some of the most relaxed gun laws in the United States. Firearm owners there are not required to have a license, and do not have to register their weapons. The state does not prohibit the sale of assault rifles, and places no limits on the number of firearms an individual can possess and the capacity of ammunition magazines.

The second amendment to the US Constitution states: "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." Since there are no longer any militias in this country as in the days when the US Constitution was being written, this clearly does not allow people to "keep and bear arms" as was interpreted by the Supreme Court in 2008 in the Heller decision and is used by the right wing as justification for the unlimited ownership of guns in this country.

This however was not the worst Supreme Court decision in our history. That goes to the Dred Scott decision in 1857 by the Taney Court. It has been said that this decision was characterized by "convoluted logic, tortured misreadings of key constitutional provisions, contempt of precedent, distortion of history, and judicial activism on a world-historical scale". It led eventually to the Civil War.

The Heller decision has led to the modern day gun lobby headed by the National Rifle Association or NRA and to this country being the most violent civilized country in the world. The NRA has not yet made its normal soothing statements about the holy American gun rights after the Nevada massacre, since it must first wash the blood off its hands.

Guns must be banned from our country as is the case in England and every other civilized country. There will be enough death and destruction in our country and in the world as climate warming gets worse, but the absence of guns in private hands will decrease the killing of innocent people.

It is Time...

For the sake of this country and the entire world, Trump must be removed as President of the United States. He is Commander in Chief of the military forces in this country and has the sole authority to launch nuclear weapons. Ponder that for a moment. We are relentlessly moving towards a military confrontation (=war) with North Korea, and Trump’s response is to threaten “fire and fury” and call the North Korean dictator schoolyard names such as Rocket Man and Little Rocket Man. Very recently there was an exciting news story that the United States had a “back channel” with North Korea which could possibly be used for negotiation, and Trump tells the Secretary of State “Don’t waste time talking to Little Rocket Man” and “Save your energy, Rex, we’ll do what has to be done”, a Trumpian way of saying that we will attack North Korea, thereby initiating World War III which almost certainly would involve the use of nuclear weapons. This is in spite of both China and Russia saying that they would intervene if the US attacked first and this intervention would almost certainly be militarily. Ponder that for a moment.

Trump is clearly mentally incapable of the duties of the

Presidency and is too dangerous to be allowed to be ”doing what has to be done.” Meanwhile, Trump is planning to attend a Golf Trophy Ceremony while at the same time sending horrible tweets to the Mayor of San Juan who had the courage to tell Trump that her people have no houses to live in, potable water to drink, electric power to communicate and fuel to run trucks and cars (and generators) from the recent hurricane. She said that her people are dying and that the US and Trump are killing them by their inefficiency and bureaucracy. The ghost writer of Trump’s “Art of the Deal” says that he is “deeply disturbed” and utterly “untrustworthy”. Add to that - belligerent, thin-skinned, unable to apologize for anything, a sexual predator, anti-science and a climate denier. But these pale against his threatening nuclear war.

Congress should create a commission to examine if the 25th

amendment should be invoked to replace Trump with the Vice President, Mike Pence, who is a religious nut case and a disciple of the Republican mantra of tax cuts for the wealthy and repeal of Obama Care, but not crazy enough to attack North Korea and use nuclear weapons.

I urge the Congress to do this as soon as possible and hopefully

prevent a third world war.