“Gun Safety”

It’s pretty clear how powerful the National Rifle Association has become – a powerful lobbying body that supports American gun-makers under the guise of serving the public interest that once actually cared about gun safety. Politicians who even hint at common-sense solutions to unchecked gun ownership, even of military-grade weapons, fall like flies being sprayed with Raid. And at the federal level, deepening background checks for potential gun owners couldn’t even get out of a Democratically-controlled Senate.

Sandy Hook, rage-based police killings, mentally ill perpetrators with easy access to assault rifles and high-capacity magazines and zealots on a mission wreak havoc and mayhem. And the best the NRA response is the idiotic “The only way to stop a bad man with a gun is a good man with a gun.” If only we had clearly immutable “bad and good” guys, nobody losing their temper, nobody sane and then “losing it,” nobody “borrowing” a loosely held weapon, and actually verifying that the relevant buyers – 40% of guns sales are between private sellers, mostly at gun shows, where there are no background checks at all – aren’t felons or lunatics to start with.

Since getting anything passed in Congress that remotely suggests the slightest limitation is less likely than yours truly becoming the next Tsar of Russia, those who believe that we have to start somewhere to contain the gun culture we have become have moved their quest to the few statehouses that might be responsive. A recent Washington State referendum added tighter background checks to potential gun purchasers. The battle has begun. They are dropping the words “gun control” in favor of a more palatable “gun safety” label.

A few states, like Oregon and Colorado, reacted to the Columbine massacre by passing tighter background checks. But as time passed, so did the passion for further restrictions. With new “open carry” laws, the trend actually seems to be going the other way. “Although 10 states have passed major gun control legislation, not only in Connecticut and New York but also as far away as Colorado, more states have loosened gun restrictions.

“Candidates who backed gun control mostly lost in the midterm elections, even after groups spent millions on their behalf. The last setback came in December when Martha McSally, a Republican, prevailed in a razor-thin recount over Representative Ron Barber, Democrat of Arizona. Mr. Barber was wounded in the 2011 shooting of Representative Gabrielle Giffords, and lost even though Ms. Giffords’s PAC, Americans for Responsible Solutions, spent more than $2 million in the race.

“Gun control groups say that although they are still dwarfed by the N.R.A., they have more money and are involved in more grass-roots activism than ever before. The N.R.A. was even heavily outspent in the Washington State referendum.

“The advocacy groups have recast their cause as a public health and safety movement, and are homing in on areas where polling has shown voter support, like expanded background checks and keeping guns out of the hands of people with domestic violence convictions, restraining orders or mental illnesses.

“Some of those provisions have gained steam even in heavily Republican-controlled state governments, like those in Louisiana and Wisconsin…. ‘Things that people feel are most doable politically right now are connected to domestic violence,’ said [Daniel Webster, the director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research]. ‘There is a lot of uptick on that issue even in red states and states with a lot of guns.’ In the past two years, 11 states have passed such legislation.

“Closing loopholes on background checks for gun owners is an area Americans support far more than steps like curbs on assault weapons or limits on magazine sizes. A recent Pew survey, for instance, showed that 52 percent of respondents said they believed it was more important to protect gun ownership rights. That figure was up from 29 percent in 2000. Still, in a 2013 poll, Pew found that nearly 75 percent of respondents supported background-check expansions.” New York Times, January 2^nd.

In the end, our guns policies – which so exceed the plain meaning of the Second Amendment which most certainly did not embrace a blank check on gun ownership – are killing us… literally. Our “gun owners rights” mantra evokes fear, derision or both from virtually the entire developed world and has done absolutely nothing to make the United States a better place to live. Perhaps with these baby steps, we can begin to instill common sense into this horrific equation.

I’m Peter Dekom, and until we absolutely and correctly can identify “good” from “bad” guys, it’s time to care more about life than bullets.