U.S. Rep. Jared Golden, D – Maine, has, thankfully, changed his stance on assault rifles. 

Hours after last week’s mass shootings in Lewiston, Golden told a news conference: “Out of fear of this dangerous world that we live in, and my determination to protect my own daughter and wife in our home and our community, because of a false confidence that our community was above this, and that we could be in full control, among many other misjudgments, I have opposed efforts to ban deadly weapons of war, like the assault rifle used to carry out this crime. The time has now come for me to take responsibility for this failure, which is why I now call on the United States Congress to ban assault rifles like the one used by the sick perpetrator of this mass killing in my hometown of Lewiston, Maine.”

Everyone has heard of mass shootings and everyone knows assault weapons are way too efficient at hurting and killing people for them to be in civilian (non-military, non-law enforcement) hands, due to things that can result, like mass shootings and mass shootings, like a mass shooting at a Lewiston bowling alley and a mass shooting at a Lewiston restaurant; or in the last several years outside Maine at schools and at entertainment venues, all places people were minding their business, learning, socializing, or otherwise living their lives, until they weren’t.

I know guns don’t kill people, people do. But assault weapons in civilian hands make it way too easy to maximize the killing on a killing spree. We did not need a person with possible mental illness to kill a bunch of people in a Lewiston bowling alley and then kill a bunch of people at a Lewiston restaurant to know this, because the same thing has gone on elsewhere in the U.S.

Assault rifles being a weapon of choice to kill a lot of people minding their own business bowling, playing cornhole, or otherwise being out and about in America, is known to anyone who consumes news, even a little. 

This is not an anti-gun commentary; this is not an anti-civilian ownership of guns commentary; this is an anti-civilians killing a lot of people by use of assault weapons commentary. Yellow flags and any other safeguards help keep weapons out of the hands of civilians who might use them to kill others or themselves; not selling assault weapons to civilians in general would also help keep them out of the hands of civilians who might otherwise kill a lot of people in a short time.

Mass killers have also used regular guns or other objects, but why make it easier for them to maximize the death count before capture or suicide, by keeping non-military, non-law enforcement assault weapon-buying legal? Some killers will find a way to get them illegally, just like with other guns; but let’s make it harder for them, at least a little. 

Thank you, Rep. Golden, for your new stance.

Week’s positive parting thought: Go bowling or play cornhole or go out to eat, in honor of those killed or injured a week ago doing that or trying to save others who had been that night.