What do these American cities have in common? El Paso, Dayton, Austin, Aurora, Binghamton, Blacksburg, Charleston, Edmond, Fort Hood, Gilroy, Killeen, Las Vegas, Littleton, Newton, Orlando, Parkland, Pittsburgh, San Bernardino, Seattle, Thousand Oaks, Virginia Beach…
They are part of a long and growing, unenviable list of communities brutalized by horrific gun massacres involving semi-automatic weapons over the past years and decades. The list goes on. Will it ever end?
In early August 2019, those mass shootings occurred on consecutive days in El Paso and Dayton. Yet nothing has changed since then, despite the public outcry at the time.
As the New York Times noted in 2019 in reporting on those shootings:
In a country that has become nearly numb to men with guns opening fire in schools, at concerts and in churches, the back-to-back bursts of gun violence in less than 24 hours were enough to leave the public stunned and shaken.
Consider some shocking statistics about guns in the USA:
- There are more firearms among the American civilian population than people — over 400 million according to a 2017 global ranking by the Small Arms Survey (part of the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, Switzerland).
- “No other country has more than 46 million guns or 18 mass shooters — the U.S. is way worse than the Philippines, Russia, China or India.”
- Americans alone own 40% of all guns in the world, more than all civilians combined in 25 other countries.
- A survey by the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva (part of the Small Arms Survey) shows the gun ownership rate for Americans is 120 per every 100 people. The next highest rate is Yemen, with less than half that many (53 per 100 people).
While Americans reportedly own 120 guns per every 100 people, the rate for Japan and Indonesia is less than one gun per every 100 people. Now pause for a moment to let that sink in, because the horror caused by these tragedies won’t heal any time soon. The epidemic of mass gun violence in America raises many alarming questions. Yet some critically important questions need to be addressed now:
- Will common sense leadership on guns ever prevail among lawmakers in Washington, DC?
- Can Democrats and Republicans finally work together to safeguard the civilian population against mass gun violence via assault weapons?
Deep scars have been seared into the moral conscience of America due to the never-ending affliction of senseless mass gun violence against innocent civilians.
Smart First Step
It’s apparent by now that a comprehensive multi-pronged approach is needed by the public and private sectors to address a broad range of issues related to firearms, including (but not limited to) the following:
- Strong enforcement of current gun laws, or lack thereof.
- Closing legal loopholes, such as no background checks at gun shows.
- Studying the relationship between mental health, age, and gun violence.
- Regulating industries that desensitize young people to gun violence.
- Leveraging Big Data to improve background checks and gun tracking systems.
- Enacting stronger deterrents and harsher penalties for those who violate gun laws.
- Increasing citizen engagement through enhanced public education, outreach, and awareness campaigns.
- Fostering non-partisan partnerships to promote smart gun laws.
The first sensible gun measure which the federal government should try to immediately implement is a more stringent version of the prior assault weapons ban, which expired in 2004. Any new version of this national prohibition would have to close loopholes the firearms industry intentionally exploited while the ban was in effect for a decade. Military-style high power ammunition, clips, and magazines should also be banished from public use, in addition to semi-automatic weapons.
Americans of goodwill from all sides of the political spectrum should push hard to build a national consensus for a new assault weapons ban. This is a sensible measure to proactively prevent more mass murders involving semi-automatic weapons by deranged gunmen. Prohibiting the sale of military-style weapons to the public would be a good first step in a larger strategy to end mass gun violence.
Outbreak of Savagery
It’s no secret that something is very wrong in America when almost anyone can easily obtain assault weapons, with endless ammunition, and then randomly shoot up crowds of innocent people. When it comes to societal rules of civility and moral responsibility, it appears we haven’t advanced much since the gun-ridden days of the Wild West. This is just the latest sign of America’s moral decay, which is due in large part to the failure of the government to adequately address the outbreak of gun-related savagery.
According to The Washington Post:
The statistics on mass murder suggest it is a phenomenon that does not track with other types of violent crime, such as street violence. . . It does not seem to be affected by the economy or by law enforcement strategies. . . The mass murderer has become almost a stock figure in American culture, someone bent on overkill — and, so often, seemingly coming out of nowhere.
Interestingly, the above quotes are from a front-page article in July 2012 after a mass shooting at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, resulted in a dozen dead and 60 wounded. President Obama said at the time:
We recognize the traditions of gun ownership passed on from generation to generation, that hunting and shooting are part of a cherished national heritage. . . I believe a lot of gun owners would agree that AK-47s belong in the hands of soldiers not in the hands of criminals, that they belong on the battlefield of war not on the streets of our cities.
Following the mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton last year, President Obama felt compelled to speak out again:
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) August 5, 2019
Confusion by Conservatives
It’s telling that a recent leading fixture of the conservative movement had expressed serious doubts about keeping assault weapons in the hands of the general public. The late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, a staunch conservative, inferred that the Second Amendment right “to keep and bear arms” is not necessarily ironclad, according to a 2012 interview with Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday.
“They had some limitations on the nature of arms that could be borne,” Scalia said regarding the context of the Founding Fathers’ original intent during the 18th century. When asked about how the modern-day Supreme Court might rule in a case involving the legality of assault weapons in the public sphere, Scalia offered a tepid reply, “We’ll see…It will have to be decided.”
This sounds like plain common sense, rather than more nonsense. Still, tough questions linger:
- Why is the debate over sensible gun control still so controversial after wave upon wave of mass murders?
- Why have countless sessions of Congress failed miserably to take strong legislative action remedying the eruption of gun violence?
- Why can’t Congress finally find a middle ground to save innocent lives?
Is it really so farfetched for some conservatives to comprehend that citizens of goodwill can support the Second Amendment on one hand, while simultaneously rejecting legalization for weapons of war on the other?
This doesn’t have to be a superficial either/or proposition, as hardliners on both sides of the gun debate have recklessly asserted per their entrenched public policy positions.
But lawmakers have proven to be morally bankrupt and politically inept over the past quarter-century since the last assault weapons ban became law.
Reasonable Restrictions
Banning semi-automatic weapons will not result in a “slippery slope” leading to the abolition of all guns. This is particularly true considering how many handguns are already on the streets of America and how easily they are unlawfully obtained. Yet, despite horrendous gun rampages from coast to coast and border to border, modern history shows that it is indeed possible for the President and Congress to successfully work in unison to enact sensible restrictions on weapons of war.
President Bill Clinton proved this in 1994 when he signed the last national ban on assault weapons. But provisions of the bill inserted by the all-mighty gun lobby let this law lapse after 10-years. The result: America today is a nation incessantly on edge, which is at least partially due to a visible increase in hate crimes and mass casualty gun incidents.
It’s hard to argue that hate groups have not been emboldened by the divisive and dangerous rhetoric of President Trump. Moreover, this cloud of hate has metastasized on an unregulated internet where would-be mass killers remain anonymous in spewing their venom on the dark web.
- How many times does this type of national nightmare need to play out before spineless politicians on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue show some backbone?
- When will our elected officials start putting America’s national interests above their own narrow-minded political interests — and that of the powerful gun lobby?
At the heart of the mass gun epidemic are two entrenched institutional culprits: politicians at all levels of government and the mighty gun lobby in Washington led by the National Rifle Association (NRA).
When the Founding Fathers penned the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution did they really anticipate citizens arming themselves with the most deadly types of firearms, those once reserved for military warfare?
Regardless of where you stand on a host of contentious gun issues, enough is enough already! Citizens simply don’t need easy access, or any access, to AK-47s and AR-15 assault weapons for lawful purposes. The AR-15, for example, was outlawed when the decade-long assault weapons ban was in place, even though the NRA made sure there were loopholes to weaken the legislative intent.
Should people really be able to purchase semi-automatic firearms as effortlessly as buying bread and milk at the local grocery store? What about the Second Amendment’s sacred right to bear arms? There’s a significant difference between the “right to keep and bear arms” and arming oneself with the most lethal types of firearms. This should be a simple question of common sense to any rational-minded person.
- While most Americans approve of the Second Amendment’s guarantee to own guns, aren’t handguns and rifles enough?
- Do sportsmen really need semi-automatic weapons to facilitate hunting down Bambi and her friends in the forest?
America’s deadly love affair with guns needs to be brought under control already. The problem is that the NRA has too many members of Congress in its back pocket due to large campaign contributions and grassroots political support.
NRA in Disarray?
Just last week, New York Attorney General Leticia James filed suit against the NRA seeking to shutter the leading pro-gun lobbying group, as explained in the Twitter thread:
#BREAKING: I filed a lawsuit to dissolve the National Rifle Association for years of self-dealing and illegal conduct.
The @NRA is fraught with fraud and abuse.
No organization is above the law.
— NY AG James (@NewYorkStateAG) August 6, 2020
NBC News reported the following on the litigation:
In these cases, James has the power to remove officers and directors, obtain relief from transactions motivated by self-dealing, protect whistleblowers, enforce the rights of the members and even sue on behalf of the group against officers, directors or third parties. . . In addition to all of that, she can also seek to dissolve the organization, take its assets and distribute them . . . Dissolution is what she has decided to seek in this case against the NRA, by asking the court to act in the interests of its members.
I’m reminded of the often-cited NRA mantra: “Guns don’t kill people…people kill people.” On that note, President Trump has towed the NRA line by saying things like, “Mental illness and hatred pull the trigger, not the gun.” Perhaps the divider-in-chief needs to have his own head examined.
While one could argue that guns technically don’t kill people, they are an unequivocal deadly means to that end. People use guns to kill other people, and sometimes themselves. Facts are facts no matter how you spin it. However, there’s a major distinction between pulling the trigger of a handgun or a rifle versus that of an AR-15 or AK-47 assault weapon. The only purpose of such weapons of war is to kill as many people as possible, and as quickly as possible.
Another popular NRA mantra is that a good person with a gun can kill a bad person with a gun. Although this may sound practical in theory, it’s flawed in practice. Even in states like Texas, with open right to carry laws, no good person with a gun was able to stop the 2019 mass killing in El Paso before law enforcement arrived on the scene.
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Final Thoughts
Again, you can support gun control without supporting gun abolition. Don’t let the NRA brainwash you into equating one with the other. Having control over weapons of mass murder is a good thing, whereas total loss of control to mass murders is not. One way to solve the persistent problem of gun violence is by voting politicians out of office who favor easy access to military-style assault weapons. Such weapons are outlawed for public consumption in nearly all civilized democratic societies, and for good reason.
But don’t tell that to the NRA.
Although the Supreme Court has consistently upheld gun rights, it has also stated that in certain circumstances reasonable restrictions on firearms are consistent with the Constitution — per the 2009 ruling in United States v. Hayes. During times of national mourning due to nonsensical acts of mass murder, we need to look inward as human beings. We need to ask ourselves some profound questions about the basic rights and responsibilities of the government to protect the citizenry against mass gun violence.
As Albert Einstein famously said, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.” This clever quip should be blasted through the halls of Congress with a megaphone every day until sensible gun laws are approved by both the House and Senate — and then signed into law by the President.
Our elected officials must not only acknowledge the disturbing reality of proliferating mass gun violence but finally, take concrete actions to curb the carnage. We can do better. We must do better. The safety of civilized society depends on it.
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A version of this article was previously published on Medium.com.
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Photo credit: Pixabay.com