WE'VE HAD ENOUGH

What can you say that has not already been said about the horrific tragedy in Newtown CT? The president, obviously deeply moved and fighting back tears, expressed the sense of grief, frustration and desolation we all feel. He also called for “meaningful action” in gun control.


How many times have we heard that phrase “meaningful action”, or its equivalent, expressed by politicians after senseless gun tragedies? How long do we have to listen to politicians of all stripes decrying the plethora of guns and the tragedies that result? When are we truly going to interpret the Second Amendment properly and realize that the right to bear arms was for defense of person and country and not a wholesale invitation to maintain an arsenal? I’m sure our forefathers would blanch at the spate of massacres that have occurred in 2012 and shake their heads at the number of weapons, equivalent to one for every member of our population.

How many more times will we have to listen to the N.R.A. and their cant that it is people who kill, not guns? Of course that’s true---but we don’t have to make it easy for them by an overabundance of weapons. On one of the talking head shows last night, one of the N.R.A. types stated that, if teachers were allowed to have guns, many lives could have been saved. My God, can you imagine that scene, inside Sandyhook School, if we had teachers firing weapons in the heat of the moment. How many more would have died?

I’m a former hunter who owned shotguns. I enjoyed riflery and target shooting as a kid at camp. I was an Expert Rifleman in the Army. I was a bird hunter. I know many responsible people who understand guns and their proper use; for example, one of my sons-in-law owns many guns (which he keeps locked in a safe) and is an avid and expert hunter. I am not anti-gun. I am, however, against the quantity of guns out there which can fall into the wrong hands.

O.K., you say, but what do we do about all the unlicensed weapons illegally bought or stolen out there? There is no foolproof scheme to combat illegal weapons, but we should make a unified effort in every community and county to register guns. It needs to be a national law and a criminal offense not to register guns. We have laws to do this, but they must be enforced on a national basis with strict punishment including jail time.

Assault weapons should be banned for private use except at licensed clubs where they can be securely kept and available only for firing at that club. They have no part in hunting. Hunting is a sport: hunter against the hunted. It isn’t sport to fire an assault weapon at one hundred rounds a minute at an animal.

Most obvious of all, we have got to devise a better method of screening those who have guns. Too many psychopaths have access to weapons. In order to get a gun, you should be subjected to psychological testing to determine if you are fit to have a gun. Maybe this is too much Big Brother controlling our lives. But that’s the point---it is our lives.

The N.R.A., other gun enthusiasts, psychologists and others should form a panel of experts appointed by the Federal government to talk to each other---no shouting, no clichés and posturing---and seriously work to find a plan to limit the gun problem. I’m tired to death of America being a symbol to the rest of the world of chaos run amok. Yes, it happens in other places---look at Norway—but it happens here more frequently because, simply, there are too many guns and too few effective controls.

It must change.