Here We Go Again
Last Wednesday, a young man walked into a King Soopers grocery store in Boulder, Colorado and fired an AR-556 pistol, a semi-automatic handgun that holds 30 rounds of ammunition. Ten people lost their lives, including Boulder Police Officer Eric Tally, the father of seven children.
Within hours of the shooting, the National Rifle Association issued a statement on Twitter with a picture of the U.S. Constitution and the famous words of the Second Amendment: “A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” Later that day, politicians all over the country called for tougher gun laws to end the violence.
Less than a week earlier, eight people were shot to death at several spas in Atlanta; six of the victims were Asian women. In March alone, so far there have been 43 mass shootings across the U.S. involving four or more victims, according to Gun Violence Archive. Fifty-five lives have been lost and 177 others have been wounded. Think about that! And March is not over yet.
It is an endless cycle with no resolution. Politicians proclaim the violence must end by tightening gun laws while the NRA rages that government will take away all of the citizens’ guns … and nothing is accomplished to make our country, and our people, safer. It just keeps happening, again and again and again and again.
The reality is that when you send your kids to school, they may not be safe. Remember Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado where 14 kids and a teacher died, and Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut where 20 young children and six educators died, and Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida where 14 high school students and three staff members died.
Your children are not safe going to school. Do I have your attention NOW???
You may not be safe going to a concert. In October 2017, a gunman firing from a 32nd floor hotel room in Las Vegas killed 58 innocent victims.
You may not be safe at a house of worship. Eleven people were killed at a synagogue in Pittsburgh in October 2018; 26 people were shot to death at a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas in November 2017; nine African Americans were killed by a shooter at a Charleston, South Carolina church in 2015; and six people died in a shooting at a Sikh temple in suburban Milwaukee in 2012.
You may not be safe going shopping, not just in light of last week’s shooting at the Boulder supermarket. In 2019, a gunman opened fire at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, leaving 22 people dead.
And there are so many shootings at bars and nightclubs, it is hard to keep count.
None of us are safe because our leaders have failed to change our gun laws based on a false interpretation of the Second Amendment. Some of our leaders have so misinterpreted the Second Amendment that the former U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger, a conservative appointed by a Republican president, denounced that interpretation. Burger said, in a 1991 PBS interview, that the Second Amendment “has been the subject of one of the great pieces of fraud, I repeat the word fraud, on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.”
Here are seven reasons why Republicans, Democrats and Independents should demand that our leaders change our gun control laws with a sense of urgency:
- On average, more than 14,000 people a year are murdered by gunfire while another 24,000 use guns to take their own lives. As many as 100,000 of our fellow citizens are wounded by gunfire every single year. In 2020, the U.S. had the deadliest year for gun violence in decades: Nearly 20,000 people were killed by gunfire, including nearly 300 children, according to the Gun Violence Archive and the Washington Post.
- The U.S. gun homicide rate is 25 times that of other high-income countries. Our global neighbors are 25X safer than the United States. Don’t you think we should learn from them? Every one of these countries has gun laws that are stricter than those of the United States and none of these countries have “taken all of the guns away.”
- Gun violence costs the United States economy $229 billion per year. Just think of the health care costs for the 100,000 people a year who are shot and survive but suffer wounds that cause them long-term health problems.
- Firearms are the second leading cause of death for American children and teens. Do we really care about our children?
- Nearly 1 million women alive today have been shot or shot at by an intimate partner, and as a society we do nothing.
- The world has changed since the Second Amendment to the Constitution was ratified in 1791. Do we really think that the Founding Fathers would protect the right of a person to walk into a grocery store with a pistol that can disperse 20 bullets in 20 seconds? All amendments have limitations. The First Amendment covers free speech, but you cannot walk into a movie theatre and yell “fire.” The Fourth Amendment protects the citizen against illegal search and seizure. Yet, before you board a plane, you must pass through a metal detector. Societies have rules and our rules surrounding gun ownership are clearly not working.
- The majority of Americans support common sense measures to stop gun violence. Over 89% of Americans support expanding background checks on gun purchases and yet the 11% who disagree keep our current gun laws in place.
We need simple, bold gun control legislation, and we need it now. Here are three things that our leaders should include in new gun control laws:
- Ban all assault rifles and extended magazines. The Glock 19 semi-automatic pistol that was used to shoot U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords and 18 others in Tucson in 2011 emptied 33 rounds in less than 30 seconds.
- Impose a universal background check on 100% of guns purchased, and set up a nationwide database of gun owners.
- Require mandatory gun licenses for gun owners. Guns should be treated the same way as cars. You need a driver’s license because driving a car is a big responsibility, and if you misuse the car, you can cause serious damage or even death, not only to yourself but to others. The same is true for a gun.
It is time for every American citizen who cares about the future of our nation to step back and look at all the facts, and support gun laws that are in the best interest of ALL Americans, not just the NRA. We should all be sick and tired and embarrassed to see the news of one mass shooting after another in the United States of America. Until our leaders do something, more mass shootings will happen. And who will the victims be? You? One of your children? One of your co-workers? A close friend? We need to do something. We simply cannot be the greatest nation on earth if we tolerate gun-bearing citizens abusing their rights and taking the lives of thousands of innocent Americans. If we want to be a great nation, we need to pass meaningful gun control legislation now.
