There’s a lot of horror to sort through in Orlando. One man was apparently a walking museum of hate. Reports are that he hated gays, women and modern society in general.
But his easily obtained weapons of mass destruction turned his hatred from a personal torment into a national tragedy.
One man in the space of a short time killed 49 people and injured 50 or so more. One hundred people killed or hurt by one man. Of course, we should blame the man who pulled the trigger, but wouldn’t any sane society also try to take that kind of trigger away from the next angry man?
There is no reason to allow assault weapons and handguns in our society. Period. These weapons are designed to kill people. While they can have some sporting purposes, whatever those are are far outweighed by their danger to society.
On the issue of guns the Republicans have been crazy and the Democrats, with the exception of President Obama and a few others, have been cowards. And, in fact, the whole gun safety movement, if it can be called a movement, has been way too timid.
Sure, background checks at gun shows would be a good thing, but it appears that this shooter bought his guns legally and went through the checks. He was a “law-abiding citizen” as the NRA likes to say. Funny thing about those law-abiding citizens who have been behind so many of these mass shootings. They were abiding by the laws right up until the time they started killing people. No doubt they drove the speed limit and stopped at all the red lights on their way to commit mass murder.
So, let’s push for something meaningful: the absolute ban on the manufacture, importation, sale and possession of all semi-automatic weapons, handguns, and high-capacity clips everywhere in America.
Is that constitutional? With what appears to be a new liberal Supreme Court in the offing (I’m growing more confident in Hillary Clinton’s chances every day) let’s find out. The court’s infamous 5-4 decision in the 2008 Heller case found an individual right to own a firearm for traditionally allowed purposes like hunting and self-defense. That might not apply to assault rifles, but since the case dealt directly with handguns, the ruling pretty clearly wouldn’t allow a ban on those. But that case is highly controversial and widely disputed by legal scholars. Just one more liberal justice could flip the balance back toward sanity.
Can we really take people’s guns away as a practical matter? No, probably not. We could instead have a buy-back program, and with the spigot of new guns shut off we’d start to reduce the 300 million guns floating around in our country. We won’t get every gun, but this nation will be much safer with 200 million guns out there than it is with 300 million and safer still with 100 million, and so on. Fewer guns mean more safety. Simple as that.
Can this be accomplished in the current political environment? Of course not. Not even close. But this is the fundamental problem with the Democratic Party that Bernie Sanders has exposed so brilliantly. America’s “liberal” party has stopped being aspirational. It’s a party of political hedge fund operators who compromise with themselves before they even open their mouths.
Nothing is possible that isn’t proposed in the first place. An absolute ban on these domestic weapons of mass destruction may be dismissed at first. But if it is kept on the agenda, it may happen eventually. And what will almost certainly happen is that the weaker, but still somewhat effective, proposals like universal background checks may finally be enacted.
For those of us — and in my case a hunting rifle owner myself — who have had enough of this needless killing, it’s time to demand strong action.
