It’s nice when they plainly state what they want and sign their names, providing positive identification, unlike some cowardly newspaper ‘editorial staff’. This is merely another of the supercilious domestic enemies of the Constitution that believe they should have the power to tell others how to live their lives and exercise their inherent rights.
They aren’t ‘good men’™. They’re wanna-be tyrants.
We Must End the Insanity of Firearms Policies in This Land of the Terrified and Home of the Fearful.
Warren J. Blumenfeld
So, after suffering the effects of yet another mass shooting in our country, this time at a Catholic school in Minnesota where a gunman shot 17 people, mostly children, killing some, I ask again, “Why is the United States the only place among our peer nations to allow virtually unrestricted sales and ownership of firearms.”
In fact, there are more firearms in the United States than there are residents: with an estimated 120.5 firearms per every 100 people. In a distant second place is the Falkland Islands with 62.1, and in third place is Yemen with 52.8 per every 100 residents.
After each incident of individual and mass shootings, we hear the obligatory “We send my thoughts and prayers to the survivors and to the loved ones of those who have died” coming from politicians and other officials. Well, I hate to break it to you, but “thoughts and prayers” simply aren’t cutting it! They aren’t helping to reduce the chances of another incident tomorrow or next week or next year.
Each time I hear of another incident of gun violence in a long and tragic chain, I think back to the very first thing that caught my eye as I entered the grounds of the Ames, Iowa Republican Party Presidential Straw Poll in the summer of 2011. Three young children, I would guess between the ages of 4 -7, sporting day-glow orange baseball caps with “NRA” imprinted atop, and round stickers on their small T-shirts announcing, “GUNS SAVE LIVES.”
But, really, do these “guns save lives”? Do laws expanding gun possession, concealed or not, actually “save lives”?
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, gun-related deaths have reached epidemic proportions in our country by snuffing out the lives of upwards of 47,000 people and wounding many more in 2023 alone. Based on an analysis of the CDC data, the firearms reform organization, Brady United, reported an average of 117 deaths per day in 2023.
Each year, gun violence affects over 100,000 people in some way. Many of the guns used in these killings reach military level weapons power, guns which currently remain legal.
Of the increasing number of individual and mass murders in the United States since 1982, most of the shooters obtained their weapons legally. Demographically, the shooters in all but a very few cases involved males, usually white, with an average age of 35 years.
Should any limits be placed on the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution, which reads: “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”?
We seem somehow only to spout the second clause in that sentence while forgetting the first, especially the term “well-regulated”!
I propose that we reevaluate the political Right’s obsession with the so-called “freedom” to bear arms because it is not only “criminals who kill people” as Second Amendment advocates claim. Therefore,
- We must ban and criminalize the possession of automatic and semi-automatic weapons!
- We must close loopholes such as buying a weapon at a gun show!
- We must pass “Red Flag” laws in every state and, more importantly, on the federal level!
- We must ban the purchase of firearms and ammunition on the internet because some people are still doing this legally!
- We must increase the waiting period and make background checks more rigorous and effective!
- We must raise the age for gun ownership!
- We must pass laws to ensure safe gun storage requirements!
- We must pass stronger laws to address gun trafficking!
- We must limit the number of firearms any individual can own!
- We must limit the number of bullets any firearm clip can hold!
- We must ban and criminalize the purchase and possession of armor piercing bullets, and also hollow-tip bullets!
- We must address gun violence as a public health issue!
- We must address the serious mental health concerns of all people with sufficient resources and treatment!
- We must provide “active shooter” training in all business, schools, and other social institutions!
- We must make the abolition of gun silencers permanent!
- We must eliminate the manufacture and sales of all “rapid-fire” devices!
- We must repeal “shoot first” or “stand your ground” laws!
- We must close the “Charleston loophole” in which, under federal law, a gun purchase can proceed by default after a three-day background check period even if that check has not been completed!
- We must mandate that local law enforcement be alerted after any loss or theft of a firearm!
- We must criminalize the production of 3-D manufactured firearms of all varieties!
- We must repeal the immunity granted to firearms manufacturers!
- We must mandate the compensation of innocent victims of gun violence!
- We must alert local law enforcement whenever any person fails a background check!
- We must rethink the “logic” of permitting concealed weapons and “open carry” especially in places like houses of worship, colleges, bars, restaurants, and political rallies!
- We must interface all databases monitoring firearm ownership to assess the firearm-owning population more accurately and effectively!
To be perfectly honest, however, I want the Second Amendment repealed! It is an Amendment for goodness sake. It is not some sort of divinely-inspired mandate from a superior being well beyond our comprehension. It was created, rather, by our intelligent but flawed “founding fathers” who probably did not want totally unlimited and unrestricted rights to bear arms.
While wise men most who crafted what many consider today as a brilliant and enduring blueprint for a new nation, they were products of their times with their individual human shortcomings and biases.
Just coming off a war of independence against one of the world’s great colonial powers, it was reasonable to expect leaders to ensure people the capability of defending themselves against any potentially tyrannical government. In this regard, they established the Second Amendment in its Bill of Rights granting people “the right to bear arms.”
Since then, firearms, and the culture supporting it, has been encoded into the very DNA of U.S.-American identity and what it means to be “an American.” But what may have been “reasonable” in the 18th century, without substantial reform, ranks as unreasonable today.
Even if they did advocate for unrestricted firearms ownership, these are the same men who enslaved other human beings, committed genocide against and expelled native peoples, withheld enfranchisement from women, engaged in and killed one another in duels, and so on.
Actually, I’m really surprised that the gun-toting political right hasn’t advocated for the return of lethal dueling matches. Maybe that’s next on their agenda. (Go see the Broadway show “Hamilton” to see how that turned out!)
But what was the actual, often hidden or forgotten reason for the founders to include the Second Amendment as they conceived it in the Bill of Rights?
In her book, The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America, author Carol Anderson discovered the overarching racial discrepancies in the handling of gun ownership in the U.S. dating to the founding of the country and to the Second Amendment.
The language of the amendment, Anderson argues, was shaped to ensure that owners of those they enslaved would be able rapidly to repel acts of resistance and rebellious uprisings. She says the right to bear arms, presumably guaranteed to all citizens but not to enslaved Africans, has been repeatedly denied to Black people.
As we all know, in the current political climate, the chances for comprehensive common sense gun reform measures in the United States is only a pipe dream as long as the political Right controls Congress and state legislatures. If the lobbyists for firearms manufacturers had not bought and paid for our legislators and members of the Executive branch, we would have seen effective laws passed years ago resulting in countless lives saved.
Nevertheless, this utter insanity in our system of firearms laws must end. Enough is enough is enough is enough already! Actually, it is far past that time.
