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January 25, 2011 07:45 AM UTC

Respecting weapons and the Second Amendment

1 Comments
by: Raf

“Let’s dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world.”

With that austerely beautiful phrase on April 4, 1968. Robert F. Kennedy wrapped up his simple elegy of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who had been assassinated earlier that evening. Tragically, RFK would be scythed down two months later, on June 5, 1968.

It’s hard to imagine, yet those twin tragedies took place 43 years ago. In the aftermath of that sanguinary summer, Congress passed the first federal laws concerning gun control. The objective was simple: keep guns out of the hands of those people for whom possession of a gun would endanger society, like felons, drug abusers, and the mentally ill.

1993 saw the passage of the Brady Bill, named after President Reagan’s press secretary, James Brady, who was nearly killed by Reagan’s would-be assassin, John Hinckley. The law created a system of background checks which helped make manifest the purpose of the 1968 law passed by Congress.

The years between 1968 and now have seen way too many people wounded or killed by guns. George Wallace, by Arthur Bremer. John Lennon, by Mark David Chapman. Reagan’s attempted assassination by Hinckley. The Columbine Massacre. The Virginia Tech Massacre. And just this past month, the brutal mass murder and attempted assassination in Tucson, AZ.

Since 1968, more than 400,000 Americans have been slaughtered by guns. Everyday, 34 people are mowed down by guns. These aren’t the actions of an alien invading force; this is what we do to each other, with scarce justification.

But what about the laws I mentioned, you ask?

What about them?

Tragically, incomplete records and loopholes in the laws have stopped background checks from doing their job. Millions of records of prohibited purchasers are missing from the database.

The background check requirement? It only applies to people who buy guns from licensed dealers. This shattered system allows truly dangerous people to slip through the cracks.

The Columbine killers were able to evade the system by using guns bought at a gun show from an unlicensed seller. No paperwork, no questions asked. Just straight cash, pal, on the barrel, and here’s your guns.

Seung-hui Cho got a gun he used to kill 32 students at Virginia Tech that he should have been prohibited from buying because

his mental health records weren’t in the background system database.

Jared Loughner also got a gun he should have been prohibited from buying because his records weren’t in the database – and then got a second gun because lax federal regulations frustrated the intent of the law.

The broken system we now have in this country can be fixed in two simple ways:

Step One: Get all the names of people who should be prohibited from buying a gun into the background check system.

Step Two: Close the loopholes in the background check system by requiring a background check for every gun sale.

That’s it. That’s all it takes.

I don’t say this as someone who hates guns. Far from it. In my seven years in the U.S. Army, I had every opportunity to shoot weapons, and I steadfastly wielded them in defense of the country I love. Personally speaking, I’ve seldom had better experiences with weapons than when firing my Mk-19 automatic grenade launcher. And once discharged, I’ve kept my skills sharp by visiting weapons ranges in Colorado and in Ohio regularly.

I grew to respect the weapons I carried as finely-shaped tools, designed to allow me to defend myself. That’s the key: I respected the weapons I carried, as do millions of civilian gun-owners here in America, because I was all too aware of the awesome responsibility that bearing arms entails. One careless move with a weapon, and I could easily wound or even kill a loved one.

The current haphazard system we have – if it can even be called that – is utterly disrespectful of my rights under the Constitution as a gun owner. The fact that anyone, even seriously disturbed individuals – especially, seriously disturbed individuals – can buy a weapon willy-nilly, with hardly a care in the world, is deeply offensive to me, and it debases the Second Amendment.

It’s past time to fix this, and the fix is simple.

If you agree, join me at: FixGunChecks.org.

One thought on “Respecting weapons and the Second Amendment”

Gypsy Chief says:

January 25, 2011 at 7:24 pm

has written about this frequently. His book “The Insanity Offense: How America’s Failure to Treat the Seriously Mentally Ill Endangers its Citizens” discusses anosognosia – impaired awareness of disease. Torrey says the gun violence comes from a small subset of SMI patients who could be helped by meds but don’t think they need to take them. Candy Crowley interviewed Torrey and Dixon. Will anything change? I don’t know. I do know that it takes a village to bury a dead nine year old. We hope Christina Taylor Green did not die in vain.

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