The “good old conservative days of the 1950s were not what the extreme right and the gun promoters depict. I was a teenager in a very conservative town in north Florida at the time. At that time if anyone walked down the street displaying a loaded firearm, he or she would have been stopped and asked to unload the gun or to take it off him or her person. Ife or she had refused, he or she would have been arrested. Similarly, state law made it illegal to carry a loaded weapon in the passenger compartment of a car. If an officer stopped a car for any reason, if a loaded gun were found in the car, the person would have hauled off to jail. If a person were to be found carrying a concealed gun on his or her person without a permit, that person would have been arrested and the gun taken away. And such permits were only given if the person routinely carried valuables or were under threat.

Yes, many people owned guns, but they used them only for hunting or dealing with varmints. It was a much safer scene because the proliferation of guns was not in vogue and the carrying of guns in public was severely frowned upon.

Unfortunately far too many Republican politicians have become enablers of senseless death by selling their souls to the NRA , he gun industry, and violent right wingers with deep pockets in exchange for political contributions. As a result we have huge number of senseless gun deaths due to the proliferation of guns, to he prompting of carrying and using guns in public, and the refusal to enact real gun reform. Every damned one of them who act in such a manner should be voted out of office.