Dan Rather: Let’s Find Common Ground on Guns

In thinking about the horror of today’s Florida school shooting, I am, of course, saddened.  But also my blood boils.  No country on earth, much less one describing itself as civilized, should have the epidemic of school shootings that we do.
As I have gotten older I have learned to get angry and stay angry far less often.  But about what happened today, how can any decent person not be angry about it?
And repeatedly ask the question, why don’t we—as a people, as a nation—do something about it?
The answer is money.  Gun and ammunition manufacturers have bought and paid for enough legislators, state and federal, to ensure that not even the most basic changes are made to reduce gun violence. That’s it. Straight up, pure and simple.
This is written by a man who grew up in a deep gun culture, Texas—a state I dearly love. Guns and hunting were as much a part of my childhood as schoolbooks and football. And continued to be well into adulthood.  And, yes, I still own my father’s old shotgun.
Many of my friends and family own guns of all kinds.  They, and millions like them, are good, decent people.  We talk, sometimes argue, about the NRA leadership, about the 2nd Amendment, about the prevalence of guns and gun violence, and the price our country pays for resisting even the most basic protections against too many people with too many guns.  What I and many other Americans see as common sense improvements on gun policies, some of these people see as an unacceptable infringement on a Constitution right.
But surely, surely, there must be some common ground, at the very least a few steps in the direction of reducing chances of what happened today continue to happen so frequently in our beloved country.
There has to be some common ground, as—at a minimum—a beginning.  Ah, but money talks. And buys lawmakers. As long as it does as much as it does, no significant change is likely.  And tragedies such as today will continue unabated and probably increase.