At NRA convention, Trump, Cruz told the truth

So if you want to know what’s wrong with America today, turn on talk radio, read letters to the editor, open Facebook and Twitter, or do it the old-fashioned way: hang out next to the water cooler. One thing for sure, everyone has an opinion and, as you well know if you’ve been reading me for the past 18 years, so do I.

From the Supreme Court’s recent abortion draft leak to last week’s unconscionable mass murder of Texas schoolchildren and teachers, one thing’s for sure: People are angry and demanding answers and rightly so.

We’ve had 50 years of abortion debate but the gun control issue is dripping hot right now; again, rightly so. I can’t even imagine the unbridled terror that was the very last thing those little minds processed before they were senselessly slaughtered by such a cowardly punk as the shooter.

So the question on everyone’s mind is why does this keep happening in America? Check those aforementioned avenues for their opinions; here’s mine.

A few talking points for starters: “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” and, “Guns don’t kill people; people kill people.”

If you can hold back personal hate for Donald Trump for a second, the man spoke truth at last weekend’s NRA Convention: “The existence of evil in our world is not a reason to disarm law-abiding citizens (but is) one of the very best reasons to arm law-abiding citizens.”

There are some who foolishly believe if we ban all guns, all killings will stop.

At the same convention, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz pointed to “broken families, declining church attendance, social media bullying and video games as the real problems.”

I agree.

When I was a boy, divorce was a jaw-dropping shocker; families were close-knit and nearly all attended church where we learned about loving each other and helping our neighbor. We played pickup ball games after school instead of sitting in front of video games seeing how many “people” we could kill on Xbox.

I remember junior high classmates driving to school with shotguns in their truck’s gun racks but we never had any school shootings. We left doors to our homes unlocked and keys in our car’s ignitions parked in our driveways but no one ever stole them.

What changed?

Again, love or hate him, Trump hit the nail on the head: EVIL has invaded our world.

Considering the point of this missive and the state of our country, I hate to admit the following: I heard about the Uvalde massacre when the movie I was watching was pre-empted by the breaking news. Once completed, the TV returned to the movie, just in time to see the movie’s bad guy break into a room to machine-gun everyone to death.

I dare you to stroll through Netflix, Amazon Prime or any of today’s movies or TV shows and see how many are crammed with glorified violence and killing. As much as I believe in capitalism, the “root of all evil” is one of THE main reasons for the prevalent attitude, whether it’s movies, video games or even high-priced automatic weapons, it’s all about the Benjamins, baby.

Family was once the ribbon that kept the fabric of American life together; we ate together, raised our gardens together, visited friends and relatives together, and played horseshoes in the backyard.

There was also hell to pay when I brought home a failing report card or joined the afternoon’s pickup baseball game instead of mowing the yard as instructed. Today, if there’s a disciplining father in the home, it’s a rarity.

As I called for many years ago in this column, the short-term solution is increased security at every American school with highly sophisticated locking systems and one point of entry equipped with metal detectors and armed security.

It’s sad we’ve come to this point, but it’s time to do whatever needed to stop carnage like what we witnessed last week. Knowing an armed officer is guarding the only school entrance will surely give second thoughts to any potential shooter.

And while I am a firm believer in the Second Amendment, we do need stronger background and mental health checks as well as an increased age to own a sophisticated weapon (how did that unemployed 18-year-old afford two AR-15s?)

It’s also sad to see how this tragedy is being politicized by the left, but we cannot allow our Constitution to be trampled on for political gain.

Finally, I find the height of evil (and hypocrisy) in American women screaming from one side of their mouths for elimination of guns being used to kill their children while from the other side they scream demanding their personal right to kill them themselves through abortion.

But, what do I know.

Tom Treece is a Monroe native and musician. Contact him at rttreece@aol.com.

This article originally appeared on The Monroe News: Tom Treece: At NRA convention, Trump told the truth