Why are car regulations sensible, but not on guns?

I imagine my grandchildren being slaughtered in a school shooting. A bullet from an assault rifle has the effect on a child’s body of a sledge hammer hitting a ripe watermelon.

No laws will ever fully stop these tragedies. Guns are such a part of our culture, with strong emotional and ideological connections. But you could say the same about cars, and we have limitations on age, competence, operating restrictions, and types of vehicles that can be lawfully driven. We don’t allow people to drive a tank through a park, or a sports car on the sidewalks. Legal restrictions around driving don’t eliminate traffic fatalities, but most would agree they make common sense. If a crazy person periodically drove a tank through a park and killed a bunch of people would we say: “Tanks don’t kill people, people kill people” and defend the right for anyone to own and drive tanks? As far as this very dangerous part of our civilized society (driving), we attempt to balance individual freedoms with the safety of citizens.

The fierce ideology around gun rights might change if one’s own child or grandchild were killed in such a shooting. If a deeply troubled person were not able to so easily obtain what is essentially a machine gun, there might have been only half, or a quarter of the children killed. Would 17 children have been killed with a .22, or a shotgun or a deer rifle? How many would have died in Las Vegas if the shooter had been limited to single-shot weapons? Maybe one of the ones NOT killed would have been yours. You would think about what people give up by being denied assault weapons. They have no purpose other than the mass, rapid slaughter of human beings. Those defending the right to have them easily available would probably look confusingly evil in your eyes. They would give up nothing but a strong, emotional ideology, while you and your family have lost your whole world.

By the way, here’s the Second Amendment, adopted in 1791, in its entirety: “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.”

That’s it. The writing seems a bit disjointed, but I guess it makes sense, particularly considering the time in which it was written. In revolutionary war times anyone might be called to be part of a rapidly-formed militia, using their own weapons. In more recent decades it’s been debated by legal scholars and the courts as to whether “the people” refers only to a “well regulated Militia” or to all people (favoring the latter in more recent rulings).

Does the second amendment protect the rights of a current-day, severely troubled teenager to purchase a military-style (militia?) rapid-fire assault weapon?

I hope the debate will steer toward finding a balance, however imperfect, that protects both individual freedoms and public safety.

RON STRATTON

Bella Vista