Now is time for reform, even if it costs an election

Isat down for breakfast with a friend the day after the Florida shooting and he said, “There’s something really wrong when you see a headline that 17 people were killed, and you’re not even curious enough to read the story.” And yes, there is something really wrong, but it’s not a lack of curiosity; it’s that we already know the story but continue to not do anything about it.

It’s a disease called fear, and it has plagued us since 1994, when a number of longtime Democratic lawmakers who had supported President Clinton’s assault weapons ban were targeted by the National Rifle Association and defeated in the midterm election that year. The Democratic Party recoiled in fear, and the belief ever since has been that it was better just to leave gun issues well enough alone. And so we did, and watched as insanity engulfed us.

The gun lovers tell us it’s not about assault weapons, even though almost all mass shootings involve assault weapons. They tell us that banning them would lead down a slippery slope to banning all guns, even though countless individuals who support an assault weapons ban have said they have no issues with people owning guns for sport.

I have heard a new excuse in

the wake of Florida: “You can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube,” meaning that there are now so many assault weapons in the hands of private individuals, you can’t do anything about it. Tell that to Australia. In 1996, following the killing of 35 people by a deranged man with semiautomatic weapons, Australia banned assault weapons and undertook an expensive buy-back program so gun owners would not feel as if their property had simply been confiscated. The gun lobby fought the effort with everything it had and lost. One of the sponsors of the legislation was burned in effigy, and then was reelected.

But what if he hadn’t been reelected? So what? What if lawmakers here did the right thing — sponsor meaningful gun control legislation — and are defeated? So what. I speak with a certain degree of experience. Following what I and many others believed was not only an unprecedented but also unfair mid-decade redistricting process, I lost my congressional primary. I had nine months left in my term, and when I returned devastated and depressed to Washington, I would routinely talk about losing my seat. Finally, a staff member with whom I was close said, “It wasn’t your seat. The seats in Congress belong to the people.”

He was right, of course, but, like so many members of Congress do, I had come to see the seat as mine.

At first, I couldn’t imagine life without it. But when the day came that I was no longer a member, the sun still rose, I still had my wife, family and real friends, and still had a great deal of life to live. My jokes suddenly weren’t as funny and there weren’t nearly as many people acting as if they were my friends, but I was able to deal with that.

The point is that Congress needs to stop acting like a self-preservation society. Besides, why would anyone too fearful to do the right thing want to keep serving?

Australia has shown us the way. There has not been a mass shooting there since they passed gun control legislation in the mid-90s. So the next time someone tells you there is no way to curb the insanity, tell them you support “The 3 B’s” — ban and buy back — because you know it will work. We can no longer be too frightened to do the right thing.