Gun Worship

This past Friday Adam Lanza shot and killed his mother, Nancy Lanza, in her home in Newtown, Connecticut.  He then proceeded to the Sandy Hook Elementary School where he massacred twenty children as well as six adults before shooting himself.  Adam Lanza brought multiple semi-automatic weapons with him and reportedly used a military type assault rifle to commit the murders in the school – the weapons are reported to have been  legally registered in his mother’s name.

It is also reported that Adam’s brother Ryan Lanza told police that Adam suffered from a personality disorder and was somewhat autistic.  Apparently Adam Lanza did not have a prior criminal record.  As of now we do not know if there was a specific motive for the attack – nor does it really matter, Adam was undoubtedly either mentally ill or extremely unstable.

Sandy Hook Elementary School joins a long list of sites where gun massacres have occurred in the United States. To mention just a few: 1999 Columbine High School, 2007 Virginia Tech, 2009 Fort Hood, 2011 Tucson Supermarket, 2012 Oak Creek Sikh temple, and 2012 Aurora Colorado movie theatre.  As the graphic indicates the number of individuals killed by handguns in the US dwarfs the number of individuals killed by handguns in other developed countries.

As horrible as the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School was, statistically it is only a blip – every single day in the United States 30 people die of gun shot wounds.

After each of the above incidents there is a wringing of hands and offering of prayers, but no effective action by our leaders to prevent future tragedies. 

The gun advocates who worship at the altar of gun ownership chant that the solution to gun violence is for more citizens to be armed with guns. Larry Pratt of the Gun Owners of America said, “Gun control supporters have the blood of little children on their hands.” Does Mr. Pratt think that untrained frightened armed citizens in a confused crisis situation will likely do anything except mistakenly identify each other as the original shooter and thus compound the bloodshed?

Delusional politicians like Mike Huckabee opine, “We ask why there’s violence in our schools, but we’ve systematically removed God from our schools. Should we be so surprised that schools have become a place of carnage?”

As I previously have discussed, the factual evidence collected by the Harvard Injury Control Research Center is unambiguous.  The number of gun fatalities is closely associated with the level of gun availability and ownership. This relationship holds even after one adjusts for a myriad of other factors such as rates of aggravated assault, robbery, unemployment, urbanization, alcohol consumption, and poverty. The close relationship between gun availability and gun violence holds within the US as well as across the rest of the world.  The more guns and the more individuals who are armed with guns, the more gun deaths that will result.

Thus, to reduce gun fatalities we need to dramatically reduce the availability of guns.  Certainly there is no reason for civilians to have guns that fire rapidly and hold large magazines.  To the extent that gun ownership is allowed, extensive background checks and training should be required. No individual should be allowed to amass an arsenal of weapons. One of the requirements should be that the weapons must be locked and secured when not being used with severe penalties being applied when this requirement is violated.

The US Supreme Court, in 2008 in District of Columbia v. Heller, overturned the District of Columbia ban on handguns.  In this case, the Supreme Court held for the first time in the history of the Republic that the Second Amendment to the US Constitution provides an individual right to keep and bear arms. The text of the Second Amendment is: 

“A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

This amendment had always been interpreted as the right of states to maintain armed militias (i.e., National Guards).  Indeed, in their dissent Justices Stephens, Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer stated simply the plain meaning of the amendment, “The right to keep and bear arms protects only a right to possess and use firearms in connection with service in a state-organized militia.” 

However, Justice Scalia writing for the majority held that the right to keep and bear arms is an individual right.  He further held that even though the District did not ban all arms (e.g. rifles, swords) that the District could not ban a specific class of arms – handguns – which are particularly dangerous because they can be concealed.   One wonders whether he would similarly rule that the District could not ban other weapons such as machine guns or chemical weapons.  Further, Scalia ruled that even safety requirements such as trigger-locks are also unconstitutional.

The most basic civil right is the right to one’s own life.  Apparently, Justices Scalia, Roberts, Kennedy, Thomas and Alito believed that the right of the citizens of the District of Columbia to not be murdered was subservient to the Justices' brand new interpretation of the Second Amendment which they in their brilliance were the first to discover a mere 230 years after the US Constitution was adopted.  To be consistent with their view, these Justices certainly should allow guns to be brought within the chambers of the Supreme Court.  Perhaps the gun-loving members of Congress should also vote to allow guns to be brought into their chambers.  No, the self-righteous defense of the right of the people to bear arms is to be over-ridden when the safety of the Justices and the politicians is at stake.  Apparently these officials do not really think that they would be safer if more armed citizens were sitting in their chambers.  These public officials should only have the same concern for the safety of mere citizens as they do for their own safety.

US politicians are afraid to support gun control – afraid of the retribution of the National Rifle Association.  Better that children should be massacred than gun owners should at all be inconvenienced in pursuing their recreational activities.  We sacrifice the lives of our children and fellow citizens at the altar of our devotion to instruments of death.