Dec. 4, 2015
It is a moral outrage and national disgrace that
civilians can legally purchase weapons designed to kill people with brutal
speed and efficiency.
All decent people feel sorrow and righteous fury about the latest slaughter
of innocents, in California. Law enforcement and intelligence agencies are
searching for motivations, including the vital question of how the murderers
might have been connected to international terrorism. That is right and proper.
But motives do not matter to the dead in California, nor did they in
Colorado, Oregon, South Carolina, Virginia, Connecticut and far too many other
places. The attention and anger of Americans should also be directed at the
elected leaders whose job is to keep us safe but who place a higher premium on
the money and political power of an industry dedicated to profiting from the
unfettered spread of ever more powerful firearms.
It is a moral outrage and a national disgrace that civilians can legally
purchase weapons designed specifically to kill people with brutal speed and
efficiency. These are weapons of war, barely modified and deliberately marketed
as tools of macho vigilantism and even insurrection. America’s elected leaders
offer prayers for gun victims and then, callously and without fear of
consequence, reject the most basic restrictions on weapons of mass killing, as they did on Thursday. They distract us with arguments about the word terrorism. Let’s be clear:
These spree killings are all, in their own ways, acts of terrorism.
Opponents of gun control are saying, as they do after every killing, that
no law can unfailingly forestall a specific criminal. That is true. They are
talking, many with sincerity, about the constitutional challenges to effective
gun regulation. Those challenges exist. They point out that determined killers
obtained weapons illegally in places like France, England and Norway that have
strict gun laws. Yes, they did.
But at least those countries are trying. The United States is not. Worse,
politicians abet would-be killers by creating gun markets for them, and voters
allow those politicians to keep their jobs. It is past time to stop talking
about halting the spread of firearms, and instead to reduce their number
drastically — eliminating some large categories of weapons and ammunition.
Certain kinds of weapons, like the slightly modified combat rifles used in
California, and certain kinds of ammunition, must be outlawed for civilian
ownership. It is possible to define those guns in a clear and effective way
and, yes, it would require Americans who own those kinds of weapons to give
them up for the good of their fellow citizens.
What better time than during a presidential election to show, at long last,
that our nation has retained its sense of decency?
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