Let me finish tonight with this.
I was in a big-city hospital recently and the issue of gun control and gun safety came up. The doctor said that if I wanted to know the impact of guns, he could take me and show me.
Gunshot wounds can be truly horrible. The reality justifies the discussion today about the need to try and do something about the proliferation of assault rifles, huge ammo magazines, and the loopholes in the requirement that there be background checks.
People have told us of the horrible sight of those young kids up in Newtown, Connecticut. I personally don’t want to be part of a movement to keep those semi-automatics flying into the hands of all sorts of people as they are today: the hoarders, the survivalists, the paranoid, the criminal and downright politically nutty.
Why? Because the next mass shooter could well emerge out of this pack. Check the shooters of Kennedy and Ford, who got shot at twice. Look at the men who shot Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King and Malcolm X and George Wallace. They all had political motives and they all had guns, got them easy, and put them easily to use.
And if you are not against this movement, then you are with it.
Write your congressman and say what you think and what you feel. Do it tonight before you go to bed. The address is U.S. Congress, Washington DC, 20515.
Chris Matthews