I am going to stand with the mother of a young man who died this week at the hands of a gunman who opened fire at a Thousand Oaks, Calif., nightclub.
Susan Schmidt-Orafanos says she doesn’t want “thoughts and prayers. I want gun control!”
Then she said “no more guns!”
Her son, Telemachus, had survived the Las Vegas massacre a year ago. He didn’t survive the Thousand Oaks tragedy.
As the victim’s father noted, according to BBC: “It’s particularly ironic that after surviving the worst mass shooting in modern history, he went on to be killed in his hometown,” his father told the Ventura County Star.
Mrs. Orafanos’ plea for “no more guns” isn’t likely to gain much traction in the halls of Congress or perhaps in the state capital in Sacramento.
However, she spoke for many Americans who also have grown tired of expressions of “thoughts and prayers” from public officials, whose declarations are sounding more like platitudes in the wake of every such tragic event.
Does reasonable “gun control” mean dismembering or repealing the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment? Of course not! It means, for instance, that universal background checks of anyone seeking to purchase a gun can weed out those who might be predisposed to commit the kinds of acts that erupted in Thousand Oaks.
“Law-abiding” citizens need not worry about their “right to keep and bear Arms” being abridged in any form.
