Dear National and State Level Republican Elected Officials:

I am a lifelong gun owner. I enjoy hunting, shooting skeet and target practice at the gun range. I am licensed to carry a concealed firearm. I am not afraid of guns.

I share the above to strengthen my case when I say the ongoing social experiment (of your making) to essentially arm everyone and anyone, indiscriminately, to enhance personal and community safety has failed, with increasingly deadly consequences.

Even the dubious “… a good guy with a gun,” argument has been rendered ridiculous when late Saturday night / early Sunday morning a shooter in Dayton, Ohio (a bad guy) was able to fire his weapon over 40 times in less than 30-seconds. Killing 9 and wounding 27, before armed police officers (the good guys) killed him.

For however complex you choose to present the problem of our national mass shooting epidemic, the solution is simple and straight forward.

Make it more difficult for the untrained, unvetted general public to purchase powerful, high capacity firearms.

In our country, for 2019, there have been more mass shooting events than actual days on the calendar. If that is confusing, I will be more direct.

In the United States, we are currently averaging more than one mass shooting event per day.

This is a direct result of Republican led gun deregulation and purposeful inaction.

If this was your intent, be honest and own it.

If this was not your intent, do something, anything, in an attempt to rectify the situation.

But, going forward, please keep your “thoughts and prayers” to yourself. Based on objective evidence, not only are they ineffective in protecting our fellow citizens, at this point the platitudes are empty.

S. Cain