Abraham Lincoln, James A. Garfield, William McKinley, John F. Kennedy, are American Presidents who were shot and killed.
Andrew Jackson, William Howard Taft, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama were all targeted by gunmen, with Reagan suffering life threatening wounds.
U.S. Senator, Robert Kennedy, shot and killed during the 1968 Presidential campaign.
Alabama Governor, George Wallace, shot and crippled for life during the 1972 Presidential campaign.
Huey Long, shot and killed while serving as the U.S. Senator from Louisiana.
Civil Rights Leaders Martin Luther King Malcolm X and Medgar Evers, all shot and killed by gunmen.
Musician, John Lennon, murdered by a gunman in New York City.
Congresswoman, Gabrielle Gifford, shot and nearly killed by Jared Loughner during a town hall meeting in Arizona.
All of these tragedies came to mind after the gunman opened fire on the Republican Congressional baseball team that was practicing in Alexandria, Virginia.
The Republican Whip, Steve Scalise of Louisiana was in critical condition, a House staff member and a former House staff member were wounded along with two members of the Capitol Police force.
The gunman, James Hodgkinson, a fervent opponent of the Trump Administration, was killed by the Capitol Police.
Hodgkinson used a 9 millimeter handgun and a 7.62 caliber rifle in the attack. According to the FBI both were legally purchased.
In the wake of the shooting the prevailing sentiment was that political rhetoric from both the left and the right has become too extreme and needed to be toned down lest extremists like Hodgkinson become motivated to act in this manner.
That discussion is long overdue and far be it from me to disagree with it.
What has genuinely surprised me is that there has been no discussion about reexamining our gun laws to prevent extremists like Hodgkinson from obtaining weapons.
Hodgkinson reportedly had a history that included a domestic violence offense and misuse of firearms that should have been a disqualifier for his obtaining firearms.
Jared Loughner, the gunman who shot and killed six people and wounded seven more including Congresswoman Gabrielle Gifford, reportedly purchased the handgun he used less than two months before the shooting despite a documented history of bizarre behavior and mental illness.
We never seem to learn from any of these tragedies.
Twenty children and six adults murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut by Adam Lanza another gunman suffering from mental illness.
Twelve people murdered and seventy more wounded by the deranged James Holmes inside a movie theatre in Aurora, Colorado.
Forty- nine people killed and fifty-three more wounded inside the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Florida.
Fourteen people dead and twenty-two more wounded in San Bernardino, California.
Thirteen people murdered and thirty-two more injured at Fort Hood, Texas.
Thirteen people murdered and four more wounded in Binghamton, New York.
Thirty-two people murdered and seventeen more injured in Blacksburg, Virginia.
The list goes on and on.
Any attempt to inject some uniformity and sanity into gun laws is met by objections that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to possess these weapons of mass destruction to any brain addled extremist dingbat that has a bone to pick with the government.
The times that I have attempted to make the case for a more rational policy in the op-ed pages have inspired an outpouring of vitriol unlike any I have ever been exposed to.
In the meantime, thousands of people die each year, the victims of firearms.
Between 1968 and 2011 1.4 million people had been killed by the use of a firearm.
In 2010 alone, gun violence cost the taxpayer approximately 516 million dollars in direct hospital costs.
But don’t be disheartened.
The National Rifle Association is trying to alleviate some of the injuries that result from the use of firearms.
They have prevailed on the Republican Congress to introduce legislation to make silencers legal.
That way, gunmen won’t suffer any hearing loss from the use of these weapons.
It’s a measure that should fit neatly into the Obamacare replacement known as the American Health Care Act.
Next year, when the Congress begins practicing for their annual charity baseball game, they might want to consider that not only will they be unable to see any potential assassin, they won’t be able to hear him either.