Gun Control? Let’s Call it ‘Right to Live’
It took just 10 minutes for a deranged 20-year old wielding a Bushmaster AR-15 military-style rifle to snuff out the lives of 20 precious 6 and 7 year olds and six teachers and school personnel, as young as 27 years old.
Even if there were an armed guard at the door, or if the principal had her own gun – as the gun violence advocates propose, Adam Lanza, who shot his way through a locked door, would have simply blown them away before they could realize what was going on.
This may finally be the trigger – the tipping point – for politicians to show even a smattering of the heroism that teachers are now expected to show and finally stepping up and doing what they are sworn to do, protecting the health and welfare of citizens by enacting sensible regulation of weapons.
President Obama, for the fourth time in his presidency, had to console mourning parents, a shattered community and a shocked nation. But this time, he went further:
“In the coming weeks,” Obama pledged, “I will use whatever power this office holds to engage my fellow citizens – from law enforcement to mental health professionals to parents and educators – in an effort aimed at preventing more tragedies like this. Because what choice do we have? We can’t accept events like this as routine. Are we really prepared to say that we’re powerless in the face of such carnage, that the politics are too hard? Are we prepared to say that such violence visited on our children year after year after year is somehow the price of our freedom?”
Senator Dianne Feinstein – who last year slowed the progress of the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act – seems to have been sufficiently outraged to answer the call, and has promised to introduce legislation on the first day of the new term: “It will ban the sale, the transfer, the importation, and the possession. Not retroactively, but prospectively. It will ban the same for big clips, drums or strips of more than 10 bullets,” she said. “There will be a bill.”
Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-Mineola), who has been a vocal advocate for reducing gun violence as a public health and safety matter after her husband was killed in a mass shooting on the Long Island Railroad in 1993 and has said she would make sensible gun regulation a priority for the upcoming term, is calling on President Obama to use his executive powers to strengthen the background check system used for gun purchases in the United States.
She wrote to President Obama today following a New York Times report that said a number of recommendations by the Department of Justice to strengthen the National Instant Background Check System have not been acted upon by the White House, even though President Obama called for a better background check system after last year’s mass shooting in Tucson.
“I ask you to immediately improve the flow of information into the system by requiring all federal agencies to share relevant information. This is an issue that I take most seriously, and an issue on which there has been bipartisan success in the past. In 2008, President George W. Bush signed into law my bill, P.L. 110-180, the NICS Improvement Amendments Act. This bill sought to strengthen the background check system. Given the bipartisan support the bill received, it can serve as a blueprint for how to move forward on this issue.”
Rep. McCarthy also noted that she has legislation in Congress now called the Fix Gun Checks Act (H.R. 1781), to improve the country’s background check system, as well as a bill to ban high-capacity ammunition magazines (H.R. 308), which have been used in almost every single mass shooting in recent history.
According to the New York Times report, the justice department recommended the same basic reforms of the Fix Gun Checks Act – to encourage states to provide better information to the background check database and to require a check for all sales including private gun show sales
Currently, 40 percent of guns that are sold evade any background check. And mental health data is not readily available even if it were considered in a background check (apparently this wouldn’t bar anyone unless the person was incarcerated and NRA-backed legislation in some states would allow gun permits for military veterans who have been adjudicated having PTSD or mental illness, while Congress is considering legislation requiring such permits to be accepted even if they have more stringent gun control).
And why is the Second Amendment more sacrosanct than any other, as if it is one of the Ten Commandments (but clearly not the one that says “Thou shalt not kill”)? Other amendments have been modified or curbed – free speech doesn’t mean you can engage in child pornography – because there is a compelling purpose of public health and safety. And the Founding Fathers were very humble in understanding they were not only fallible, but they were inventing a form of government that had not existed before.
Even if you insist the Second Amendment provides an individual right to “bear arms” it does not bestow a “right” to manufacture or sell guns. Congress clearly has the power to regulate commerce, and it has already shown that it has the right and responsibility to protect citizens from dangerous products. And that’s what they should do now, because of the more compelling demand of public health and safety – by establishing safety criteria, a real permitting system and fees, fines and liabilities.
What if a renewed ban on assault weapons – that was allowed to expire in 2004, resulting in a tripling in the number of gun deaths by assault weapons – were passed as quickly as Michigan just adopted a law, in the dead of night, allowing concealed weapons to be brought into schools and day care centers? Or the law which Florida Governor Rick Scott passed prohibiting pediatricians from asking parents if there were guns at home, a protocol recommended by the Centers for Disease Control which wanted to curb the number of children killed because guns were not safely stored.
We have a crisis in the United States. We have a lethal mixture of a culture of violence; the ignorance, stigma and lack of services that keeps individuals from getting the appropriate diagnosis and treatment for mental illness; but most significant of all is the easy access and availability of military-grade assault weapons and high-capacity ammo clips with no purpose other than murdering massive numbers of people.
Every country has individuals suffering from mental illness and has had murders, but the United States stands alone in the number of mass slayings and the mind-numbing volume of murdered souls.
On the same day that Adam Lanza, massacred the 26 children and teachers, a man in China attacked 22 children with a knife. All 26 in the Sandy Hook elementary school perished of multiple gun wounds – three to 11 shots apiece without Lanza needing to reload – but all 22 of the Chinese children survived the knife attack.
Other countries that have had suffered such tragedy as Newtown have immediately taken action. As Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times noted: “The fundamental reason kids are dying in massacres like this one is not that we have lunatics or criminals – all countries have them – but that we suffer from a political failure to regulate guns.
“Children ages 5 to 14 in America are 13 times as likely to be murdered with guns as children in other industrialized countries,” Kristof reports. “So let’s treat firearms rationally as the center of a public health crisis that claims one life every 20 minutes. The United States realistically isn’t going to ban guns, but we can take steps to reduce the carnage.”
He notes that we readily protect schoolchildren with building codes, safety standards for school buses, training and tests for bus drivers, and regulate the safety of cafeteria food. “The only things we seem lax about are the things most likely to kill/
“The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has five pages of regulations about ladders, while federal authorities shrug at serious curbs on firearms. Ladders kill around 300 Americans a year, and guns 30,000.
“We even regulate toy guns, by requiring orange tips – but lawmakers don’t have the gumption to stand up to National Rifle Association extremists and regulate real guns as carefully as we do toys. What do we make of the contrast between heroic teachers who stand up to a gunman and craven, feckless politicians who won’t stand up to the N.R.A.?”
There are some 300 million guns in the United States – enough for one for each adult – and yet gun ownership is actually going down, Jackie Hilly, executive director of New Yorkers Against Gun Violence said on MSNBC’s “Up with Chris Hayes.” The discrepancy is because there is an increasing concentration of guns into personal arsenals, much as Adam Lanza’s mother kept.
Adam Lanza epitomized everything that is wrong with America’s gun culture: the arsenal of military-grade weapons were purchased legally by his mother, and like so many gun deaths, involve a gun at home being turned against someone in the house, but Adam, a minor who apparently suffered from mental illness that was not treated, was able to easily access the guns and the high-capacity ammo clips (in fact, went to shooting ranges with his mother).
Newtown’s mental hospital was closed in 1995 because of budget cuts. On the other hand, Newtown, the home of the Shooting Sports Foundation, rejected modest gun control provisions.
But why are we even having a debate over gun regulation? Why are we wracking our souls, and pondering the Constitutional obstacles and whether regulations could pass muster of a right-wing ideological majority on the Supreme Court bent on using their power to achieve a political agenda.
Why are we contemplating how to shift more of precious resources of our public schools from sports, music and theater, and laying off teachers (who are expected to give their lives) and making classes larger, so we can put more and more money into hardening security and turning schools into prisons?
The Great Neck School District, alone, spends $1.3 million on school security – a number that swelled after Columbine. The district even employs a director of security, and most recently expanded video surveillance.
But the Sandy Hook Elementary School had implemented every practical form of security and protocol, and still could not protect the people inside.
“As a private citizen, I am again convinced that if this incident does not lead to a discussion of greater gun control (and I will use that phrase) then I do not know what will,” Great Neck Schools Superintendent Tom Dolan said. “I am deeply saddened as a human being by what occurred and alarmed as a superintendent that schools can still be targets. Our security will never be foolproof, but the proliferation of weapons that should only be used on the fields of war, makes it a much more dangerous proposition. “
Why as a society, do we have to live in fear of sending our kids off to school, college campus, the mall, a movie theater, to work, or even to church, as if we lived in a war zone or with daily terrorism, like Israel?
Half the problem – the proliferation of combat-style assault weapons and high-capacity ammo clips – could be solved immediately.
Gun manufacturers could simply not produce the weapons for retail sale. Just stop. Can drug manufacturers deliberately sell drugs that kill? Of course not.
Here, though, you have the purest case of the deficiency of laissez-faire capitalism and why government regulation is necessary.
The assault weapons are flooding our towns and villages because the gun manufacturers are making a killing. Literally. And though they could stop manufacturing and retailing such weapons of mass destruction, they choose to produce 3.2 million of the Bushmaster that Adam Lanza used – America’s most popular rifle – in a single year, happy they are just flying off the shelves, especially after President Obama’s election in 2008, when gun sales spiked.
An investment company, Sabre Capital Group which publishes The Wall Street Flaneur, reports, “The gun industry has performed very well under Obama, with both industry leaders Ruger (RGR) and Smith & Wesson (SWHC) considerably outperforming the S&P over the last four years. Demand for consumer guns has dramatically increased in correlation with the economic and political changes beginning during the final year of George W. Bush’s Presidency.
“Lead largely by a multimillion dollar campaign by the National Rifle Association, special interest groups have been proliferating a doomsday scenario for the Second Amendment as well. While President Obama did mention taking on new gun control legislation in the first political debate, his record as President has otherwise been silent on the issue. The NRA and others, however, are actively participating in conventional media and online insisting that the President will take draconian measures to limit gun ownerships, going so far as to suggest that the government would attempt to confiscate private citizens legally obtained property (www.GunBanObama.com). These efforts create images of totalitarianism and fear.”
Sabre Capital is bullish on gun stocks: “Economic uncertainty and the threat of gun control will drive demand for firearms higher. The reality of the political landscape and national priorities will prevent any new gun legislation from being passed. The result will be four more years of continued prosperity for those manufacturing and selling consumer firearms.”
These are the backers of the National Rifle Association, which, while waving the flag of loving America, apply a nice chunk of their profits to fund campaigns in support or defeat of politicians in order for them to do their bidding, like pass Stand Your Ground laws that have been a license to kill.
“Is this the way we want America to go?” Sen. Feinstein said. “In other words, the rights of the few overcome the safety of the majority? I don’t think so.”
Polls show a majority of Americans want sensible gun regulation.
Feinstein, Lautenberg and other Democratic Senators (even Manchin, a conservative Democrat from gun-loving West Virginia) have come forward to promise legislation, and because Democrats control the Senate, there may be hope.
But even if House Democrats led by McCarthy push for regulation, what do you expect John Boehner and the Republicans would do? Would Boehner even allow a vote in the House? Not likely (if you want to be repulsed, look at the comments on Boehner’s blog).
The right wing is masterful at turning a phrase to get a desired political impact – estate tax is rebranded “death tax.” The right to control women’s health choices is called “right to life.”
Advocating on behalf of sociopaths to use military-style weapons to massacre innocents is called “gun rights.”
I propose some rebranding, too:
Instead of “gun rights” the appropriate term is “gun violence.”
Instead of “gun control” use “gun safety.”
You know how they like to label green initiatives as some kind of tax? Let’s call the extra security we have to have at schools and shopping malls the NRA tax.
President Obama told the mourners of Newtown and the nation, “We can’t tolerate this anymore. These tragedies must end. And to end them, we must change. We will be told that the causes of such violence are complex, and that is true. No single law — no set of laws can eliminate evil from the world, or prevent every senseless act of violence in our society.
“But that can’t be an excuse for inaction. Surely, we can do better than this. If there is even one step we can take to save another child, or another parent, or another town, from the grief that has visited Tucson, and Aurora, and Oak Creek, and Newtown, and communities from Columbine to Blacksburg before that – then surely we have an obligation to try.”
Here’s a list of steps that can and should be taken:
Renew the ban on assault weapons.
End availability of high-capacity ammo clips
Limit the number of guns an individual can be purchased.
Require background checks for 100 percent of gun sales – presently, 40 percent of gun sales evade background checks.
Keep a national database of gun owners, and if they are flagged for domestic violence, felony conviction or mental illness, local law enforcement should be alerted.
Make gun manufacturers and gun dealers liable for their products.
Require gun owners to purchase insurance (you are forced to buy automobile insurance, why wouldn’t you be required to buy gun insurance).
Impose high taxes on gun purchases and permits, and use that money to fund mental health facilities and law enforcement.
Require microstamping technology.
Repeal Stand Your Ground laws.
Make sure that the next NRA grand stand: to force states with tough gun regulations to accept the conceal-carry permits from other states, are defeated by Congress.
And let’s rebrand the campaign for gun safety from “gun control” to “right to live.”
And let’s bring those banners to Washington on Inauguration Day.
