Mayberry: Why we need new gun control laws — now!
So let’s get something straight here, yes we – and by we, I mean one heck of a lot of Americans who want common-sense restrictions on gun sales – are politicizing the shooting in Las Vegas.
No apologies. We’re not buying that “it’s too soon” malarkey any more.
Gun violence is and has long been a political issue and a national public health emergency.
We are now averaging 20,000 suicides by gun a year and 13,000 murders and accidents. That’s 634 people a week erased from the Earth by gun violence.
Between 100,000 and 150,000 people show up every year in our emergency rooms with gunshot wounds, costing our health system millions of dollars each year and causing those victims untold pain and suffering, in some cases lifelong.
When 26 or 49 or 59 are killed all in one incident, as in Las Vegas this past week, it’s shocking beyond belief.
It should be shocking that there have been 1,500 mass shootings (four or more victims plus the shooter), more than one a day, since Sandy Hook in December 2012.
You may hear about 14 shootings in Chicago over a weekend, but you never hear about the dozens or hundreds of isolated shootings around the country, on farms, in cities and suburbs, in small towns over the same weekend.
You never hear about the morons who accidentally shoot themselves or their wives while cleaning their guns or the guys who escalate bar fights to shootouts.
You never hear the stupid teenagers who shoot themselves or their friends while showing off their gun-handling prowess.
And you rarely hear about the toddlers who shoot their siblings or themselves after finding a gun in their parents’ bedrooms.
You can talk about mental illness or terrorism or racial hate, or irresponsible gun owners, and comfort yourself that it can’t happen to you or yours, but the only common factor about how all those victims die is that there was a gun present. It’s all about fear. The NRA markets fear, fear of the government coming for your guns, fear of being attacked in your home, fear of Muslims or blacks or illegal immigrants coming to get you, fear of the Second Amendment being repealed.
It also markets increasingly ludicrous laws to our legislators, like the one Pennsylvania has passed twice giving the NRA the right to sue municipalities that try to rein in gun violence, and the laws loosening restrictions on concealed carry rights on college campuses, in schools, hospitals, airports and bars.
My greatest fear is of people carrying guns. I’m afraid to go to a movie, make a mistake while driving or be in a crowd anywhere at any time.
I’m afraid of people walking around Target or marching in white supremacist demonstrations with rifles slung over their shoulders.
We won’t ever change the Second Amendment, that’s clear, but neither is it the golden idol to be worshipped above all constitutional rights that many of you think it is.
We all know it was written in the context of maintaining an army of farmers, at a time when it took a minute to load a single shot into a rifle and when everyone hunted for the table.
None of those things apply any more.
After every one of the mass shootings in recent years, the Republican-controlled Congress, the only governmental body that can do anything to stop the “American carnage” that Trump promised to “end now,” has done nothing, nothing, nothing.
Oh sorry, Congress has done something this time: It postponed a vote to allow the sale of silencers and cop-killer bullets, for now, and it may, just may, ban those bump stocks that mimic automatic rifle fire. Big whoop. The New York Times reported earlier this week that Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, has received more than $7 million from the NRA over the course of his Senate career with nine other senators pulling in from $2.8 million to $6.9 million.
In the House, French Hill, R.Ark., has received more than $1 million and nine other congressmen received between $137,232 and $800,000 (congressmen are cheaper to buy than senators).
All 20 of them are Republicans and most of them are from rural states where a majority of households owns guns and the belief in gun rights is the strongest.
According to a Mother Jones study, the number of gun deaths per 100,000 population is also much higher in those states – Wyoming, Alabama, Montana, Arkansas (16 to 18) – than in New Jersey (about five ) or even Pennsylvania (about 10). More guns, more death.
Every one of the state legislatures around the country that have enacted laws to loosen, not strengthen, state gun restrictions are Republican-controlled.
So if we are ever going to get over our insanity about guns the first thing we all have to do is stop electing and re-electing Republicans, starting with next year’s state and federal legislative elections.
We must organize (not just keep asking people for money), we must become the same kind of passionate one-issue voters that so many conservatives are, marketing our own grief and fear.
We have changed public opinion significantly about guns in the last couple of decades but we need to do more, we must lead our leaders to a new way of thinking about guns.
According to a June Pew Research poll, 90 percent of Americans favor universal background checks, 89 percent favor barring the mentally ill from buying guns, 89 percent favor a federal database to track weapons, 85 percent favor preventing those on the no-fly list from buying guns, 80 percent support banning assaultstyle weapons, 79 percent favor banning high capacity ammunition clips.
Cigarettes and booze are still legal and widely available, but society has experienced a seismic shift in its attitude toward smoking and drunk driving, greatly reducing both.
We must do the same with guns.
Jodine Mayberry is a retired editor, longtime journalist and Delaware County resident. Her column appears every Friday. You can reach her at jodinemayberry@comcast.net.