“Common sense isn’t so common, anymore,” goes one woefully pithy saying.
And, it certainly seems true — at least when it comes to matters of politics in this period.
But, exactly WHAT IS “common sense”?
Common sense could be the proverbial “moving target” which changes with every whim, and puffing wind of doctrine.
But, let’s hit the “pause” button for a moment and examine some matters surrounding firearms, aka “guns” and at least the two most recent tragedies in Buffalo, NY and Uvalde, TX, both sites of mass murders by 18-year-old gunmen armed with AR-15 style rifles.

Campaign flyer for GOP Arkansas U.S. Representative, Jay Dickey, CD-4.
Hyperbole aside, is there ANYTHING which could have been done to have prevented either holocaust?
Quite possibly, yes.
So, let’s examine some facts, and what laws ALREADY EXIST (or not) pertaining to firearms that might have prevented such carnage, and if they were useful — or not.
First, in BOTH cases, the perpetrators were aged 18.
Second, in BOTH cases, the firearm used — an AR-15 style rifle with a high-capacity ammunition magazine — was legally purchased.
Incidentally, that was also the firearm of choice used in numerous other massacre-style killings.
With respect to the Federal Government, there is NO law requiring establishing a comprehensive database of such massacres, and because of that, there is none. The ONLY such databases are maintained by private, non-governmental entities. That should not be so.
The Department of Justice maintains all sorts of statistics about crimes, and their perpetrators, but not on matters like this.
Why not?
That’s because a GOP Representative from Arkansas’ 4th Congressional District, Jay Dickie Jr. (1939-2017), put a “rider” onto a budget item in 1996 which has since been monikered as the “Dickie Amendment” which specifically forbade the Federal Government from studying such things.
At the time of his terms in the House of Representatives, Dickie described himself as an ardent Second Amendment supporter, which essentially translated into being “the NRA’s point person in Congress,” as he later described his role in a July 27, 2012 Op-Ed co-authored with Dr. Mark Rosenberg, MD.
“One of us served as the NRA’s point person in Congress and Read the rest of this entry »