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TEHRAN, February 26 -Anti-gun activists and campaign groups calling for stricter gun control inside the United States need to focus on the type of gun violence that is taking place in other countries under Washington’s watch, says a former US Marine in London.
TEHRAN,Young Journalists Club (YJC) -Anti-gun activists and campaign groups calling for stricter gun control inside the United States need to focus on the type of gun violence that is taking place in other countries under Washington’s watch, says a former US Marine in London.
Ken O’Keefe, a peace activist and a Persian Gulf War veteran, made the remarks in an interview with Press TV on Sunday about a widening boycott movement that has targeted America’s most powerful gun lobby.
The US National Rifle Association (NRA) has come under fire for resisting stricter gun control in the aftermath of the recent mass shooting that killed 17 people at a Florida high school.
Activists say there are too many guns at the hands of American people and this is the main reason for the high armed murder and crime rate in the country. They have called for the revision of the 2nd Amendment of US Constitution, which allows purchasing guns for the purposes of self-defense.
O’Keefe told Press TV that he did not agree with the activists because they were aiming to strip a group of people of their constitutional rights and that is exactly what the “corrupt government” wanted.
“While I’m not a patron of the NRA myself, I firmly understand and appreciate the value of the American citizens maintaining possession of their constitutional rights and weapons,” he said. “Specially in the context of the American government that has gone completely rogue.”
“What the government of the United States has been doing for many years now is taking more and more power and rights away from the people and vesting it into a centralized government which is completely corrupt and does not represent the values or the interests of the people,” he further argued.
That is why, O’Keefe asserted, taking away more constitutional rights would only play into the hands of the government.
“I find this misplaced,” he said. “We need to look no further than the tax dollars that we pay to the US government which is used to kill literally millions of people around the world in the illegal wars,” he said.
The corruption and lobbying power, O’Keefe said, would reveal the larger forces that are at play in this issue, namely the AIPAC (American Israeli Public Affairs Committee).
“The AIPAC lobby is not only powerful I would argue that it effectively own the US government,” the veteran said.
Source:Press TV
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