Dear NRA: (a gentle screed)
Dear NRA:
I have learned from NPR that your organization will be holding a press conference on Friday, at which time you will address gun control and other issues surrounding the recent school massacre in Newtown, CT. In an effort to save you time and energy, I am alerting you to assertions and proposals that will not fly with me, and which I regard as self-serving bullfeathers. This letter will, I hope, give you time to adjust your message to the nation on the subject of gun control.
First, If you remind me that "Guns don't kill people, people kill people," I will respond that the use of an automatic weapon gives a hellish advantage to killers over the wielders of knives, frying pans, rifles, and even cars, all of which can kill people. 650 rounds per minute is fast. Your average six-year-old kid is just not fast enough to get out of the way in time to avoid being shot multiple times. Teachers and principals are probably even slower. Yes, people will go on killing people, but the fewer automatic weapons are in circulation, the lower the body count will be. The principal of Sandy Hook Elementary had sufficient courage to physically attack an armed intruder, but nobody has sufficient speed to dodge bullets coming that quickly.
Second, if you suggest that we need to identify and treat that part of the population deemed mentally ill, I would agree with you, but assert that such an initiative by itself will do little to reduce automatic weapons massacres. We need to find and treat the mentally ill so that we can alleviate their suffering, and that of their families, and generally work toward making every member of our society as healthy as possible. Part of that tiny percentage of the mentally ill who are a danger to others will, in our culture, be unbearably tempted by the fire power of automatic weapons. We have too many of these weapons for anyone's safety, including members of the United States House of Representatives, theater goers, mall shoppers, and, of course, six-year-olds attending first grade. As you well know, we cannot lock people up in penal or psychiatric institutions on suspicion that they will harm others. We have to wait until they have expressed their homicidal impulses, or otherwise broken the law, before we can incarcerate. Again, if it's very difficult to get hold of a gun of any kind, much less an automatic one, the body count will be lower. The school principals and teachers will have a fighting chance.
Third, if you wave the Second Amendment at me, I will respond that the language of this amendment clearly gives only a well-regulated militia the right to bear arms, not every citizen who feels unsafe, or, of course, homicidal. We license people to drive cars, and we can license them to own guns, and we can make it much more difficult to buy a gun and the ammunition for it than it currently is. We can also make it illegal at all times to buy an automatic weapon for private use.
If I were you offer you, the NRA, any advice, it would be to stand down on your resistance to any limitations on firearms sales. Make it clear that you have no objection to making automatic weapons illegal. THAT, gentlemen, would be a great gift to the republic, including all parents of six-year-olds. That would not make you heroes, but it would do more for the health and sanity of this country than anything you have done to date.
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