The LuLac Edition #4, 755, June 1st, 2022

WRITE ON WEDNESDAY 

 

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This week we look at an editorial from The Citizens’ Voice regarding gun culture in America, the state and our area.

START, AT LAST, TO REVAMP GUN CULTURE

Because too many politicians have cowered before the gun lobby, the United States has inserted itself into an endless loop of helplessness regarding gun safety while enduring a culture that places guns above even the lives of children. The only way to break that loop is for justly outraged Americans to make gun safety a priority and throw out politicians who will not vote for it.

Tuesday, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos reportedly walked into an Uvalde, Texas, elementary school with two semiautomatic, military-style assault rifles and killed 19 children and two adults. It was the 27th school shooting this year, following 34 in 2021.

Politicians who pander to absolutists on gun issues, like Republican U.S. Rep. Dan Meuser and state legislators like Democratic Sen. Marty Flynn — who voted to penalize local governments that enact gun safety laws even after one of his own guns somehow was stolen from his car and used to shoot a man in Scranton — have refused to enact even modest gun safety measures, claiming that regulated safety is incompatible with the Second Amendment.

The courts long have found that all rights come with inherent responsibilities and nothing exempts the Second Amendment. Even the Supreme Court’s 2008 Heller decision, finding for the first time that the Second Amendment ensures a personal right to bear arms, recognized an inherent interest in public safety.

Limits apply to other fundamental rights. Individuals and the free press are accountable in consequence and in court for what they say, print or broadcast. Three people in San Jose, California, were not shielded by their right to practice their religion, when they were charged with murder recently for allegedly killing a child during an exorcism.

The infantile view of absolute gun rights is so pervasive that it has spawned an ancillary argument, which holds that there are so many guns in circulation that public safety regulation is pointless. There are the slogans masquerading as philosophy: “Guns don’t kill people — people kill people.” And deflection, the notion that the real problem is mental health, or that mass murder flows from violent video games.

There is scant proof to support those evasions, but even if there were, it still would be idiotic to ensure that people moved to act by those issues have easy access to instruments of mass murder.