Pa. lawmakers have duty to prevent gun violence
This is normally where we list all of the mass shootings that have taken place, from Columbine to the present. Tragically, the list is too long to fit into the allotted space for this op-ed.
The gun violence scourge that plagues this country — and this country uniquely — has made infamous the names of more towns and locations than we care to think about. Made orphans of more children than it ever should have and took the lives of more children than we could ever imagine happening.
What drives us to write this column today is this fundamental truth: We don’t have to live like this.
We are here — scared of sending our kids to school — because of a direct policy choice. And it’s a choice not all of us want to make.
We believe that easy access to military-style assault weapons with the capacity to kill many people quickly is the problem. We believe all gun sales should have a background check. We believe guns should be removed from people who are a threat to themselves or others.
Sadly, that belief is not shared by all of our colleagues.
Last week, (May 25) https:// www.governing.com/now/ pennsylvania-dems-unable-toget-vote-on-assault-weaponsban House Democrats resorted to using a rarely used parliamentary maneuverer known as a “Discharge petition” in an attempt to force a vote on a bill that would ban assault weapons, like the ones used in Sandy Hook, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, and now Uvalde. This discharge vote was necessary in order to avoid the imposed bottle-neck that every gun safety bill has met in the House Judiciary Committee, where each and every gun safety bill has gone — and died — without even getting a vote.
With one exception, every Democrat attempted to force a vote on an assault weapon ban. With one exception, every Republican present voted no.
If the House chose, we could ensure a background check on every gun sale in the commonwealth. We could ban assault weapons and 3D-printed guns. We could require safe storage of firearms and allow local municipalities to enact their own gun safety laws. All are common sense proposals.
But we can’t get a vote. We are shut out of meaningful debate on gun safety.
No one should be foolish enough to think that gun safety measures alone will fix our society or remove violence. The causes of violence are complex and multifaceted. But, at a bare minimum, can we stop with the sheer, unadulterated hypocrisy?
Can we stop saying that gun violence is a mental health problem, when we fail, year after year, to adequately fund mental health?
Can we stop saying that gun violence is a societal problem driven by poverty when we refuse to take meaningful steps to fund measures that would end poverty, like education or child care?
Can we stop blaming straw men like video games and divorce, when literally dozens of countries play more video games and have more divorces, yet have barely a fraction of the gun violence that we have?
Can we stop saying that we need more “good guys with a gun,” when it took 19 heavily armed police officers over an hour to bring down one twisted teenager with an assault rifle in Uvalde?
Can we stop saying we should arm teachers with weapons, when we refuse to arm them with the resources to teach effectively and fulfill their role as the educators of our students?
The problem is not that we have schools with too many doors, too many video games, or too much poverty. The problem is that we have too many military-style guns with the fire power and capacity to quickly kill scores of innocent people.
There isn’t an American alive right now who hasn’t lived in fear about what could happen to them or their loved one. To be clear, we live in a turbulent world. But we are not merely row boats in a stormy ocean, trapped by the currents and the wind. We’re Americans. We put a man on the moon. We helped end countless diseases and won the Cold War. We’ve created a wildly prosperous society. We’ve led the world in innovation and been a beacon of freedom, light, and safety throughout the planet.
As Americans, we cannot turn a blind eye to gun violence. We must address this crisis of gun violence that has destroyed so many innocent lives by comprehensively addressing the issue and enacting common sense gun safety measures.
It is a spirit of hopefulness, not helplessness, that should guide us as we attempt to solve this gun violence scourge. We have the power to do so. All it takes is the political will.