I am numbed by the tragedy of gun violence that, yet again, took so many innocent lives. This time it claimed the most innocent of all. Our precious, young children and their teachers. I first wrote about the issue of gun violence on March 24th of this year in a piece entitled Do Guns Make Us Safer. I recommend a reread if you read it before. It’s a good place to start this discussion.
The only difference is that now, like Joe Scarborough this morning on Morning Joe, I’ve had it. I know it’s not worth it. I don’t care if your view of the right of our citizens to possess weapons of mass homicide arises from a broad view of the Second Amendment, or from a narrow view of the right of government to regulate private ownership and use of killing machines, or from natural law, surely now you can agree with me….It’s just not worth it.
The facts are not in dispute. We have over three hundred million guns in the United States in private hands. We are number one. We even beat out the great Republic of Yemen in per capita gun ownership. We have fifty percent more guns per capita than they. We have thirty one thousand gun fatalities per year of which three thousand of them are children. Eleven thousand of these are homicides. And how many in the UK, our sister in democracy…fifty eight. Yes, I said fifty eight compared to our eleven thousand. In fact, we’ve suffered the ignomy of over one hundred fifteen thousands deaths of children by guns since 1979, and we’ve done nothing about it. Something is very, very wrong here. Astoundingly, the prescription of the NRA and many state legislatures is to put more guns in more hands in more places, and to make access to the instruments of death by gun even easier and guns more prevalent. And the results of the strategy….a child in our Land of the Free is thirteen times more like to be a victim of gun violence than a child in any other civilized country. A victim of domestic violence is twelve times more likely to be killed if there is a gun in the household. And yet, and yet, the legislature of Michigan just passed laws allowing its citizens to carry concealed handguns in schools, churches, child-care centers, hospitals and college dorms and classrooms. Go figure.
Ed Bennett, former Secretary of Education under Reagan from 1985-1988, recommended on one of the Sunday talk shows that we put armed guards in our schools. Yep, that’s what he said. Maybe we should up that. What about an armed guard in every church and synagogue, every shopping mall, every movie theatre? Hell, why stop there. Let’s put an armed guard on every street corner in America. That would fix the problem. To many, the only solution to gun violence is more guns.
I, like many of you as well as our President, suffered more than a little wetness around my eyes not to mention the pain in my heart when I thought of the horrible death of the children and teachers in Sandy Hook, Connecticut and the lasting effects of their deaths on their loved ones and others who survived this tragic act of gun violence. Evidently, not so the officials of the National Rifle Association (NRA) who when contacted by a reporter from CNN responded by saying that “we will have no comment until all the facts are known”. What? Until all the facts are known….Why not say, “our thoughts and prayers are with the loved ones of the victims of this senseless violence, and we pledge our full efforts to keep weapons designed to kill other humans out of the hands of irresponsible people”. Nah, that’s far too much to hope for.
In this great land of ours, we have a toxic brew of over burdened and under resourced mental health facilities, a culture of violence fueled by tradition and glorification of violence (gun violence in particular) by popular media including mind eroding video games, and a proliferation of guns of all types….from Saturday night specials to military look-a-like semi-automatic rifles…with incomprehensible ease of access to anyone with a few bucks in their jeans. Ok, I got it about the mental health problem, but as far as I know, there are a lot of people with mental issues all over the world. The difference is, in most of these places, the NRA, or its equivalent doesn’t exist with the power that it has in the United States, and, consequently, there is limited access to these particular weapons of mass destruction. Think of all the money and resources we’ve dedicated to the eradication of terrorism as a threat to our nation, but yet we tolerate the killing of more of our citizens every year than has ever been lost to terrorist acts. All in the name of the Second Amendment?
I’ve already heard versions of the NRA mantra that “guns don’t kill people, people kill people”. It’s far more accurate to say that it’s “people with guns who kill people”. It’s up to us. We can fix this. It’s clear that we can no longer tolerate this insanity.
Most politicians, including the president that I just voted for, have been lilly-livered when it comes to sensible legislation to deal with gun violence. Obama signed two gun bills in his first administration. One was to allow carrying guns in national parks and the other was to allow carrying on Amtrak. I, for one, am going to demand the he do better.
Armor piercing bullets, high capacity magazines, gun show exceptions to background checks, rapid fire semi-automitic rifles…what’s the cost? I end where I started. It’s not worth it. Now or ever. Guns kill.
