GUN VIOLENCE CONTINUES UNABATED

Shortly after the Sandy Hook massacre in December of 2012, I published an article demanding that assault weapons be regulated. Adam Lanza, the 20 year old assassin at Sandy Hook, killed 26 people, including 20 children ranging in age between 6 and 7 years old. By March of 2018, about 7,000 more children had died by gunfire, more than the total number of combat casualties suffered by our military since September 11, 2001. At the time I reported that our citizenry owned 270 million, or 30%, of all privately owned firearms in the world. Since then, these totals have steadily climbed to 428 million or 46%. We now own 120 firearms for every 100 citizens. Many fair-minded Americans have expressed their concern about gun violence and support for rational gun control measures. In a recent poll, in excess of 83% of those interviewed support background checks for private and gun show sales, 72% favor requiring licensing before gun purchases are consummated and 57% would ban assault weapons altogether. Nevertheless, our politicians don't seem to notice. Little or no progress has been made. During the first four months of 2021, gun activity in the U.S. has already resulted in 6,300 deaths and 175 mass shootings. Vociferous opposition by opponents of any restrictions on gun ownership proclaim that any mandate would do little to reduce these morbid statistics. In which case I submit that assault weapons are military and have no business being included in civilian arsenals. Two weeks after 35 people were killed during a mass shooting in Port Arthur, Tasmania, then Australian prime minister John Howard ushered in a semi-automatic weapons ban. That same year, 1996, a massacre in a Scottish school in Dunblane killed 16 children and one teacher. The following year private ownership of most handguns was banned in Great Britain. And, in response to the March 15, 2019 mosque massacre in Christchurch, New Zealand, which killed 51 at the hand of a white supremacist, prime minister Jacinda Ardern introduced an Arms Amendment Act which made assault weapons illegal, and initiated a national buy-back program. The Amendment became law on April 10 of that same year. In this country, the day after "Sandy Hook," and, subsequently, following most massacres, the demand for assault weapons exploded, causing one weapons dealer to observe that he sold more AR-15 and AK-47 rifles in one week than he would normally sell in one year. What sets us apart from all other developed countries is accessibility, our Second Amendment, the National Rifle Association, and, perhaps, a residual frontier mentality. What dominates the discussion, however, is the Second Amendment to our Constitution. The Second Amendment reads: "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." During the Revolutionary War era, "militias" referred to groups of men banded together to protect their communities, towns, colonies and, eventually, states. James Madison proposed the Second Amendment to empower state militias, expressing a concern of a too powerful central government, and establishing the principle that the government did not have the authority to disarm citizens. The Amendment was modeled after a condition found in the English Bill of Rights of 1689, which, in turn, was a reaction to King James II, a Catholic, who had attempted to disarm his Protestant opposition. There are only three countries that protect the right to bear arms: Mexico, Guatemala and the United States. Mexico currently forbids ownership of military weapons, prohibits the carrying of weapons in some inhabited places, and only has one gun shop in the entire country, located in a heavily guarded army base in Mexico City. Guatemala allows its citizens to purchase guns. However, a purchase requires government approval, and gun owners need to re-apply and re-qualify for firearm licenses every couple of years. The real meaning of the wording of our Second Amendment is not at all self-evident, and has given rise to much commentary. For most of our legal history, the consensus has been that the right to bear arms was not an individual right, but rather a right for those called to military service, the militia. In 1991, former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Warren Burger, stated that the idea that there was an individual right to bear arms was "a fraud," and if it had been up to him there would never have been a Second Amendment. Over time, however, under pressure of gun-rights advocates, spearheaded by the NRA, this perspective gradually changed. In 2008, in "District of Columbia v. Heller," in a 5-4 decision, the Court held that there is a constitutional right to have a hand gun in one's home for self-protection. But the Court did not say that this right was absolute, and intimated that governmental restrictions might be appropriate. Nonetheless, even that position seems to be changing as some justices appear to have developed evolving views on the subject. Just last month the current Court agreed to review New York State's restrictions limiting the carrying of concealed weapons - a law enacted in 2012 in response to the Sandy Hook massacre. In the mean time our statistics continue to go through the roof. The U.K registers roughly 150 gun related deaths per year. We average 109 deaths every day. Every year we record 14 times more gun related deaths than the European Union, which has 180 million more citizens. In 2012 we averaged about 32-thousand gun deaths every year. Last year this number reached 44-thousand. It is time for our politicians to stop dusting off their stock responses to every recurring mass shooting, get out from under the thumb of the NRA, and come up with sensible gun control legislation, or, otherwise, we may as well make "Amazing Grace" our new national anthem. Theo Wierdsma