title:  Mom Of Columbine Shooter Shames The NRA And Gun-Crazy Republicans
text: Sue Klebold, the mother of Columbine High School shooter Dylan Klebold, has written an op-ed column in the Washington Post discussing the issue of gun violence in America.The April 20, 1999 shooting at Columbine in Colorado killed 13 and injured another 24. The shooters, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, committed suicide. At the time it was the deadliest school shooting in U.S. history, but then the shooting at Newtown happened.In her moving piece, Klebold discusses the role of mental health in mass shootings, and notes that over the years since the massacre, we as a society have learned to better see the signs of mental distress and to know better how to reach out to kids in crisis.But she also notes that as important as that is, the issue of easy access to guns is still hanging over this issue.Having said that, I still cannot help but believe that Dylan and Eric would not have been able to take the lives of so many if they had not had such easy access to guns. As I later learned, Dylan and Eric   both of whom were minors   secretly attended a gun show where they bought the shotguns they would use in the massacre and met a young man who sold them a TEC-9 semiautomatic pistol.Is our right to gun ownership under the Second Amendment so absolute that we cannot, at the very least, restrict access to certain kinds of weapons to protect the most vulnerable among us   especially teenagers, whose judgment at the best of times is compromised by hormones, impulsivity and immature decision-making? Is our right to bear arms so vital to what it means to be an American that there can be no limit on those rights whatsoever, whether raising the legal age at which one can purchase a gun, as we did with the drinking age or conducting more extensive background checks or restricting access to assault weapons designed for the battlefield?Her words strike right at the heart of the core beliefs of the NRA, who insist nothing can ever actually be done to rein in guns in America. Instead, the NRA and the politicians it owns   Democrats and Republicans   mouth words about  mental health  and move on from one mass shooting to the next.If the mother of one of the worst killers in American history can see this, why can t they? Is the money really worth it?Featured image via YouTube