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This Week’s
Gun control is a subject I’ll advocate as long as there’s still a breath in me. I also intend to keep supporting national handgun and assault weapons bans until those who create the nation’s laws get it right. And the only way to get it right is to make sure every firearm manufactured, bought and sold is subject to government certification and fingerprinting. I’ll never understand law-abiding persons’ obsessions with guns. Yet, there are those who own firearms for sport or for personal safety. It’s a losing battle trying to outlaw guns, especially with the powerful gun lobby regularly giving money to loyal politicians. So, let the gun nuts have their weapons as long as there’s compulsory registration for their guns, like there is for motor vehicles and pets and manufacturers "fingerprint" each weapon they create and maintain records for at least ten years. If anyone, from National Rifle Association president Charlton Heston to the seasonal hunter, can justify the need for assault guns, except as weapons of mass human destruction, they should volunteer for combat duty ASAP, so they can employ their mad passion. Five years after the Columbine High School shootings when two depraved teenagers, equipped like combat soldiers, walked into the Littleton, Colorado school armed with guns, knives and bombs and killed a dozen classmates and a teacher before turning their weapons on themselves, America’s gun laws are still way out of control. Before Columbine there was a two-year wave of nine other shooting incidents at small town schools across the country. The killings at the suburban Colorado school raised the death toll to 30 students and teachers in eight states. Columbine was the worst of them. It spurred swift responses nationwide. After years of neglecting vital safety and security issues schools quickly caught up, but there have been too few consequential changes in the nation’s gun laws. In a recent letter asking the New York State legislature to enact harsher gun laws, Mayor Bloomberg wrote, "Even in a climate of historic crime drops, guns still do far more damage than they should." Last year in New York City guns injured nearly 2,000 people. Sixty percent — 380 — of homicides were gun-related. Even an idiot realizes that more stringent gun laws would reduce that number just as automobile deaths were reduced with stricter and better-enforced drunk driving laws. It’s even sadder because a majority of the guns used for crime in the city comes from states, like Virginia, that have gun laws that allow almost anyone to buy and transport firearms out of state. Some politicians constantly carp about an excess of violence and sex in our culture, but lack the same motivation when it comes to universal gun registration. The law banning the manufacture and importation of a variety of assault weapons expires September 13. The influential NRA, which is a Mecca for gun nuts, has been actively lobbying to see it is not renewed. It should be a hot topic in this year’s presidential campaign, but will likely take a back seat to the war in Iraq and the economy, which, when the ban runs out, opens the door for more pointless bloodshed. Last month, gun control advocates won a surprise victory when the Senate overwhelmingly voted to prevent a Bush-backed, GOP-sponsored bill that would have given gun makers liability protection against lawsuits. If gun activists and the NRA refuse to recognize that the Second Amendment was not meant as a blanket authorization permitting anyone to own a firearm, then let’s turn the tables on those gun nuts. Let ‘em have their guns! Ban the ammunition! Or at least make specific laws and limit the distribution, sale and purchase of bullets. I never liked guns, although I played with toy guns during bouts of cops and robbers or cowboys and Indians when I was a child. However, when I had the opportunity to play with real firearms in my Army training — and shot expert to boot — I was glad to be aiming only at stationary targets and not human beings. Five years ago in my column after the Columbine shootings I wrote, "…the collective American conscious should…recognize something must be done. What in particular is that something?" Half a decade later that question still begs a suitable answer.
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