I read a report that Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett accused the National Rifle Association (N.R.A.) of wanting to institute a police state because NRA leaders suggested that armed guards protect children at schools.
The Mayor needs a history lesson.  Before the Nazis of Germany persecuted and murdered millions of Jews and dissidents, it first separated the non-Nazi Germans from the right to own guns and the right to freely speak and write on public issues.  The Communists in the Soviet Union and Red China did the same thing.
It is not protecting children with armed guards that usher a police state.  It is the disarming of the average citizen so that people are unable to resist with force to protect their liberties against government officials who want to abuse their power and the people.
If we have armed guards protecting money and property at banks, oil refineries, and other places, shouldn’t we have armed guards protecting our country’s most precious treasure – our children?
I read extensively and I am more sensitive to the details of the terrible shootings than some people.  At Columbine, Virginia Tech, Tucson, and Aurora, all the gunmen had taken FDA approved anti-depressant drugs which had the awful side effect of causing homicidal and suicidal fantasies.  I strongly suspect that the shooter at the mall in Oregon and the shooter at Newtown used such FDA approved drugs, too.  The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is supposed to protect us from such drugs.  The FDA has failed miserably in that respect.
In 1975, my grandfather was murdered by a man who took FDA approved anti-depressant drugs.  My grandfather used a gun and his own body to protect and save his wife and his daughter – my grandmother and aunt.  This made me sensitive to the slim mention of the roll of anti-depressant drugs in the news reports of other shootings.
Mayor Barrett is wrong.  The NRA is correct.
