What’s Wrong Today:
What
happened in Newtown simply canât be processed. The evil displayed is beyond
anything that we can comprehend. The Wrongologist lives about 15 miles from
Newtown. He has shot guns. He has used them to kill small animals. He is not naive
to the value and allure of gun ownership or to the constitutional issues raised
by both sides in the debate about gun controls.
We need
the NRA and their fellow advocates to balance
the scales for the rest of us, to explain why the possible loss of freedom that would accrue to gun owners
if we had tighter restrictions on guns and ammunition purchases offsets the death of these children in
their classrooms.
They need
to explain why their inconvenience or loss of freedom would be worse than that of the people who died in other shootings, or who lost
family members and friends.
They need
to balance for us the permanent loss
of so much potential with the impatience of a waiting period, a background
check, or the loss of the ability to fire more rounds per minute.
This is the
choice our society makes in the gun ownersâ favor every day.
One of the
most basic purposes of government is to protect its citizens. We accept this
throughout our society and it causes inconvenience and some loss of freedom to
many. Think about not being able to take your bottle of water or your hand gun through
security at the airport. It is inconvenient and it is an abridgement of your
rights.
Our government
has determined that the greater good requires that abridgement of your rights to
protect all of the passengers against the threat of a shoe bomber or worse.
We accept
this in the interest of the greater good.
As
Nicholas Kristof wrote
in todayâs New York Times;
American
schoolchildren are protected by building codes that govern stairways and
windows. School buses must meet safety standards, and the bus drivers have to
pass tests. Cafeteria food is regulated for safetyâŚThe 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.
Will
we EVER regulate guns as thoughtfully as we should? What should we make of the
contrast between those heroic teachers in Newtown and our cowardly politicians who
wonât stand up and be counted whenever the issue of gun control comes forward?
So far it
has come out that the primary gun used in the Newtown killings was a Bushmaster.223,
which was formerly regulated by the now-defunct
assault weapons ban.
Combining
300 million people with a simple path to gun ownership creates an environment
where this horror will occur. We should know that these events, even with tighter
controls and laws, will generally not be preventable.
However,
that is no excuse for turning our faces away from the problem. There are
questions that need answering:
- Does
the profile of mass shooters coincide with a person who would normally be
denied a gun given the current process?
- What
options are available? Do we enact sweeping
changes in gun laws, similar to much of Europe that makes it quite difficult to
own and maintain any firearm?
- Do we further reduce regulation so that
everyone is strapped and ready to engage the bad guy?
- Or do
we listen to Mike
Huckabee, who said the shootings happened because religion isnât taught in
public schools?
Kristof suggests we look at Canada,
which requires a 28-day waiting period to buy a handgun, and it imposes a
clever safeguard: gun buyers should have the support of two people vouching for
them. He goes on to say:
For that matter, we
can look for inspiration at our own history on auto safety. As with guns, some
auto deaths are caused by people who break laws or behave irresponsibly. But we
donât shrug and say, âCars donât kill people, drunks do.â
Instead,
we have required seat belts, air bags, child seats and crash safety standards.
We have introduced limited licenses for young drivers and tried to curb the use
of mobile phones while driving. All this has reduced Americaâs traffic
fatality rate per mile driven by nearly 90 percent since the 1950s.
It is time to take on the NRA, the gun retailers and the liberty-first crowd that have
made our politicians look the other way whenever the subject of stronger gun
control legislation comes up.
Elections
matter. Elect people of moral and intellectual courage!
