Tomorrow will mark four weeks since the shooting at Sandy
Creek Elementary School in Newtown Connecticut, which killed 28 people:
20 1st and 2nd graders, 6 teachers and administrators, the gunman, and
the gunman's mother. Every time I hear a story relating to the victims
it just makes me sadder and sadder.
I am going to lay
it out plainly: Everyone of good will must now agree that assault
weapons and high-capacity gun magazines must be banned. So even though I
admit I would rather have guns completely banned, people like me, along
with others who cherish their gun rights, should be able to agree on this
compromise. If, after hearing of caskets being built to bury innocent 5 - and 6- year-olds, you don't want to act to protect people by limiting gun ownership beyond simple handguns and rifles, you need to search yourself--to see if you even have a soul.
I can remember talking to a Republican friend of mine a couple of weeks ago and giving the example of Australia's gun laws (this is must see, if you haven't seen it already) as a way to prevent future mass shootings, he admitted that he liked the idea and this made me feel good because people of good will from different sides of the political spectrum could agree on common-sense law. The next time we met he changed his mind because he "looked it up" and [supposedly] the crime rate went up after this gun law went into effect in Australia. No doubt he got he got his misinformation from the right-wing echo chamber, because Australia's government crime statistics tell a different story. Most crimes have gone down since the new laws went into place in 1996, including theft, robbery, and murder. The one crime I saw that did go up was assault, but as crime goes assault is almost always preferable to murder. After this second talk with my friend, my faith in reaching a simple compromise diminished because pro-gun extremist propaganda is uncompromising; hence, my despair. Nevertheless, I persevere in my blogging.
The second amendment is not stopping us from reaching compromise. I am willing to concede handguns as an individual's right after the 2008 Supreme Court decision District of Columbia v. Heller, (though I plan to look historically at the 2nd Amendment in a future post, which will demonstrate what an activist court the Roberts' court is). But there is no constitutional impediment to imitating the effective laws that Australia passed after a massacre with a similar weapon.