I remember when I was a kid, that we played a game in which one person would give a direction to all the other players about how many steps you could take and if you didn’t ask, “ Mother may I ?” you had to return to the starting line and begin playing the game again.
It seems that game has made a comeback in the Nation’s capital.
Last Sunday, fifty-nine people were shot and killed by a gunman at a concert in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Over five-hundred more were wounded or injured.
When White House Press Secretary, Sarah Huckabee-Sanders, was asked whether this might prompt legislation concerning gun sales, she said, “Now was not the time to talk about it.”
Last month, after hurricanes destroyed Houston, Texas and much of the State of Florida, Environmental Protection Agency Director, Scott Pruitt, said it was not the time or place to talk about climate change.
So, I have to ask the question, when is it time to talk about these issues?
The gunman who massacred so many innocent people in Las Vegas had a cache of twenty-three firearms in his hotel room. It consisted of sixteen assault rifles and seven handguns.
Police report that one of them was a fully automatic AK-47 type rifle with a stand to steady it while firing it.
One need only listen to the audio tape of the attack to conclude that the weapon being fired is on automatic fire.
It allowed the gunman to fire two-hundred and eighty rounds into the concertgoers in thirty-one seconds.
At this writing it is unclear whether he used a semi-automatic weapon with a bump stock or it was modified to automatic by using a conversion kit.
Both, at the present time, are legal.
Searches of homes that he owned revealed that he owned a total of forty-three firearms. All of them appear to have been purchased legally.
I have no faith that this tragedy will lead to the enactment of any common-sense restrictions concerning the sale and possession of firearms.
None were enacted after twenty children and six adults were murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut almost five years ago by a gunman wielding an assault rifle.
If anything, we have gone backwards.
In February, Trump signed legislation that made it easier for people with a history of mental illness to purchase firearms including assault weapons.
The latest National Rifle Association proposal is to allow the legalization of silencers.
It’s being portrayed as a health measure and called the “Hearing Protection Act.”
Silencers have been banned since the 1930’s because of their use by gangsters.
Needless to say, that if the gunman in Las Vegas had a silencer, none of the concertgoers would have been able to hear the sound of the automatic gunfire recorded on the films of the shooting and thee police would have had far more difficulty in locating him, increasing the carnage.
The same legislative package would also allow the legalization of armor piercing bullets.
It doesn’t get any healthier than that.
In the days following the destruction of Houston and Florida not a word was heard from the Trump Administration about climate change.
In the wake of the destruction and devastation of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, the silence has been deafening.
It’s not surprising.
Since taking office Pruitt has met almost exclusively with coal, oil and gas executives and their lobbyists.
He had no time for environmental advocates or public health groups.
He has spent all of his effort undoing the regulations and championing the cause of the climate change deniers.
I remember a time when a hurricane was a rare weather event.
Sometimes years would pass before a major one hit.
In the past month we’ve had three hurricanes, Harvey, Irma and Maria devastate parts of Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.
At this writing, a fourth, Nate is scheduled to make landfall in Louisiana, striking the areas ravaged by Katrina.
During the past half century, thirty-nine of the fifty most destructive hurricanes have occurred since the turn of the century.
There can be little doubt that the increase in their frequency and power is the result of the waters of the ocean becoming warmer as the result of greenhouse gases that trigger global warming.
Oops!
I forgot that now is not the time to talk about climate change.