By Edwin Cooney
I suppose it should have been a “no brainer,” but it has been an intellectual and even an emotional struggle for this observer of American history and current events…however, I’ve finally abandoned my neutrality on this most crucial national issue of gun control legislation.
As 17-year-old David Hogg of Marjory Stoneham Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida who lost fourteen of his schoolmates and three teachers on Valentine’s Day put it, “we’re children, you guys are the adults.” Sadly, we adults have been quarreling long enough so that there have been 438 casualties in American schools since the December 2012 Sandy Hook, Connecticut killings of 20 children.
Look, I want to be rational or, if you prefer, reasonable, but this latest chapter in American Tragedies is especially galling. Of course, there are reasonable debating points on both sides of our national armaments tug of war. Gun owners are right when they insist that people and not guns kill. They’re also right when they warn us that we tinker with the Second Amendment at our own peril. Third, they’re also wise to note that limiting of individual freedom, or freedoms, can be a slippery slope. However, it ought to be clear that Americans are increasingly abusing the basic right to life of innocent children, all of whom they would eloquently and fiercely be protecting if they were still in the womb. Nevertheless, it appears that once a child is born, its value is secondary to the importance of a constitutional amendment or the right of arms manufacturers to make a profit.
Let me be clear. Had I been a policeman on duty in Parkland, Florida last Wednesday, I would have gladly put some hot lead in Nikolas Cruz’s physiognomy -- or elsewhere -- to stop him from acting out his rage. With each shot, not only was he destroying others, he was devaluing his own existence. He had to be stopped.
As the result of all this, the gun control debate has shifted in my mind. Gun rights’ advocates want to make this debate about the mentally challenged and the rights of their innocent victims. President Trump seems to be prepared to cast all of those who would conduct mass shootings as “mentally ill.” (Note: for a long time I’ve regarded all murderers as being mentally ill to some degree. However, when I offer this argument as an explanation, pro death penalty supporters reject it. Now it’s a convenient argument to protect gun manufacturers against the wrath of the victims of gun abuse.) Of course, some mass murderers must be mentally ill, but it seems to me that this whole argument misses the mark. Go ahead and ban all “mentally challenged” people from buying guns. As far as I’m concerned, gun ownership ought to be a privilege rather than a right, just as the right to drive an automobile is a privilege and not a right.
The right to own guns was never a hot political issue until the 1963 assassination of President Kennedy and the subsequent assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King and Senator Robert Kennedy. As I finally join the forces of those demanding “gun control” regulations, I assert the following:
(1.) Opponents of gun control legislation have historically been guilty of the same logic as slave owners. Specifically, slave owners defended their right to own slaves because slaves were considered property.
(2.) Guns, of course, are indeed property, and the right to own property in the minds of most Americans is absolute. However, how you use your “property” can come into conflict with the rights of others whether that property be your fist or your gun.
(3.) As a new supporter of “gun control,” I wouldn’t confiscate anyone’s gun without due process of law, but I’d regulate the manufacture of guns.
(4.) Unless I’m missing something, I find it strange that “right-to-life advocates” generally don’t join forces with pro-gun regulation proponents. Is it likely that pro-life advocates believe that gun ownership is more precious than life itself? Can they be sure that the unborn aren’t often the victims of gun owner abuses?
(5.) The only sure way to protect school children is to have police officers in our public schools. Officers on school campuses would be much better than encouraging teachers to carry guns!
(6.) If the placement of police officers in our schools seems strange or at odds with freedom, remember that throughout the nineteenth century, United States Marshals and army installations were established all over the west to protect settlers from marauding “savages” as Native Americans were often categorized. Indian fighters were as American as Buffalo Bill!
(7.) Ask yourself, whose rights take precedence?...the security and safety of children or the unregulated rights of gun manufacturers?
(8.) To whom do Conservatives and Liberals, Republicans and Democrats primarily owe their ultimate loyalty? Is it to those who bought their offices for them or is it their living-breathing constituents?
(9.) Getting a grip on these mass shootings affects our national security even more than the rantings of Kim Jong-un.
(10.) Let’s start being the adults David Hogg in his agony pleaded for us to be! Let’s police where we ought to police and regulate where we ought to regulate!
Issues such as the workability of gun control proposals are only legitimate questions so long as responsive and responsible legislators take seriously the pain such questions cause the people. To the degree that they remain unresolved, they are mere political fodder.
Let us regulate gun usage and the behavior of the people will surely follow!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
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