Parkland, Another Avoidable Tragedy

Another school shooting, this time in Florida, 17 dead, more than a dozen injured. Almost weekly we hear of our children being slaughtered in their schools or concert attendees being mowed down like a herd of hunted prey. and yet we still refuse to consider the link between our lax gun laws and these tragedies.  The fact that every other nation that has stricter gun control laws than the United States, also has much less gun violence is dismissed by the gun control opponents as irrelevant.  They argue that the restrictive gun laws of these nations has made them vulnerable to a takeover by a despot and that the best way to preserve our liberty and prevent these shootings is to have more people armed and to eliminate gun-free zones.  Although they believe that their policies will reduce the number of gun violence deaths the U.S. is currently experiencing, they acknowledge that it is highly unlikely that it will ever reach the low rate that exists in the countries with strong gun laws, but they declare that these deaths are the price we must pay in order to have a well-armed citizenry which can overthrow a dictator if one should come to power in the United States.

First, it wouldn’t matter if every citizen owned and was proficient in using a cache of a 100 automatic guns, they would be no match for a government that has tanks, missiles, and nuclear weapons.  The assertion that an armed citizenry would be a formidable adversary against such an enemy is absurd.

Second, with regards to a highly weaponized citizenry being able to overtake an active shooter, one only needs to recall the Las Vegas concert shooting.  Even if every person attending that event was armed with a machine gun, they could not have prevented the shooter, encased in a hotel room on the 32nd floor, firing 9 rounds per second, from killing 58 and injuring over 500.  The only way to prevent such carnage is to ban weapons that can fire that vast amount of bullets in that short a time period.  Gun control opponents disagree.  They acknowledge that, in this situation, they could not have taken down the shooter, but they argue that the solution is not to ban these types of weapons but to merely prevent them from falling into the hands of the mentally disturbed or those with such criminal tendencies.  According to them this can be accomplished by intense perusal of all postings on social media outlets and by people constantly reviewing and assessing the actions of their neighbors and relatives. AND THIS IS THE GROUP THAT PROFESSES A DEADLY FEAR OF GOVERNMENT INTRUSION!!!

Third, our current gun laws are not protecting our freedom but undermining it.  How free are we when we cannot leave our home without being armed, without constantly being on the alert for the presence of a shooter, and constantly ready to draw our gun, that is, if we can, if we are not one of the first to be gunned down. A family outing has essentially become a journey into a battlefield! How free are we when we must be constantly examining the actions of our neighbors, friends, acquaintances, and relatives in order to determine if they are exhibiting a proclivity for violence and need to be reported to the authorities!  How free are we when we must worry that our children upon leaving for school might be returned to us in a body bag!  How free are we when we must watch our children agonize over whether their next day at school might be their last day alive.

Most gun control advocates are like me, we want law-abiding adults to have the right to own a gun. I felt relieved that my elderly parents had a revolver in their home.  I was relieved that the young mother in Oklahoma had a gun to protect herself and her baby from two intruders.  I, like many gun control advocates, merely want to prevent certain groups (minor, felons, those on the terrorist watch list, the severely mentally disabled) from owning guns and to also restrict the type of guns.  If the following four restrictions were implemented, we could prevent many of these mass shootings as well as preserve our Second Amendment right to own a gun.  1. Hold gun owners responsible for the use of their firearms by others if they were negligent in preventing access, in particular, failure to prevent access to minors.  2. Close the loopholes that prohibit universal background checks.  3. Ban all semi-automatics.  4. Require a person to have gun safety training before they are issued a gun.  None of these rules deny a law-abiding adult the right to own a gun.

Gun control opponents argue that all of this is irrelevant, that the right to carry the most lethal guns available all the time and in every place is granted to them by the Constitution.  The Supreme Court disagrees.  It has ruled that like every other right granted in the Constitution it has limits.  Yet the gun lobby choses to ignore this basic principle of justice. Why?  Because, their principle objective, despite their constant protestations, is not concern for freedom or security, but for the euphoria of power imparted to them by the owning of a weapon that can intimidate, overpower, and kill a multitude of people. Like the mythical dictator they have created, their objective is power and like their mythical dictator they are indifferent to the carnage they have instigated to achieve this objective.

We cannot reason with these despots nor appeal to their humanity.  Our only defense is to vote from office those legislators who oppose gun control and replace them with legislators who will enact the four aforementioned gun ownership restrictions.