March past NRA’s leaders to reduce firearms violence

Twenty dead firstgraders at Sandy Hook Elementary School didn’t produce nationwide marches for gun control. Their slaughter didn’t shame Congress into passing even the mildest of new regulations.

Yet 14 dead students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School led to marches Saturday in about 800 American cities. They forced the Florida Legislature to pass some mild regulations. They could make gun control a key issue in the midterm elections.

Why? The Stoneman Douglas students are old enough to speak for themselves. Many do so with passion and eloquence. They receive money and advice from smart adults, some of whom stepped up their efforts to reduce gun violence after Congress brushed off the Sandy Hook Slaughter as the price of the Second Amendment.

As important as the students have been, however, the debate about reducing gun violence can’t stop at schools. It also must include gun owners, separate from wellpaid demagogues who lead the National Rifle Association. CEO Wayne LaPierre made about $1.4 million in 2016. The organization has assets of about $217 million.

Focusing only on schools allows the NRA leadership to distract from the real issue — weapons — by talking about hardening classrooms and arming teachers. It allows Florida House Speaker Richard Corcoran, R-Land O’Lakes, to proclaim “Never Again” yet bully his appointees on the Constitution Revision Commission into quashing a proposal that would have let voters decide whether Florida should ban military-style weapons.

Between Sandy Hook and Stoneman Douglas, the United States had mass shootings at a nightclub — in Orlando, 49 dead — at a church — in Sutherland Springs, Texas, 26 dead — and at an outdoor music festival — in Las Vegas, 58 dead. Since Sandy Hook in December 2012 we have had 1,600 mass shootings, which most researchers define as four or more people dead or wounded.

Though the Legislature’s response pleased Stoneman Douglas parents, any meaningful gun violence policy must be nationwide, so it must come from Congress. And no meaningful policy can come until Congress acknowledges everyday firearms violence as a problem.

In the United States, the homicide rate from firearms is four times higher than that of any other developed nation. Americans make up 4.4 percent of the world’s population but own roughly 42 percent of civilian firearms in circulation.

Firearms kill roughly 33,000 Americans each year, about 60 percent of those from suicides. Despite President Trump’s argument that “we need to fix mental health,” only about 5 percent of firearm homicides are linked to mental health.

Firearms also wound nearly 70,000 Americans each year — 58 at Pulse, 20 in Sutherland Springs, 851 in Las Vegas and 17 at Stoneman Douglas. The Washington Post reported recently on a woman who survived the Las Vegas shooting but remains hospitalized six months later. The highvelocity bullet from the shooter’s militarystyle weapon left her stomach unable to process food.

Despite NRA lobbying against increased collection of data on firearms, credible research concludes that our disproportionate rate of gun violence compared with other countries stems from our disproportionate share of guns. Yet NRA leaders regularly characterize any proposed regulation as near-confiscation. The NRA is suing Florida over the new age requirement of 21 and three-day waiting period.

So we must bypass the leadership. We must bypass the internet trolls who lie about and otherwise insult the Stoneman Douglas students. A doctored video shows Emma Gonzalez tearing up the U.S. Constitution. In fact, she was tearing up a shooting range target. That’s a real example of “fake news.”

Bypassing the leadership could get us to where most Americans are: aligning the Second Amendment — written because we didn’t want a standing army — with our times. Examples: a no-exceptions ban on military-style weapons and high-capacity magazines; universal, expanded background checks; limits on monthly purchases; technology that allows only owners to fire guns.

As he marched in Boca Raton, 84-year-old Seymour Brockman said, “People need guns for some purposes, and then there are hunters, but we don’t need these weapons of war, which are instant killers.”

For decades, an intransigent minority of Americans has kept the country from responding to gun violence. Redistricting, mostly by Republicans, has enhanced that influence. Perhaps, however, things are shifting. Perhaps those trolls are worried.