It is past time for a ban on assault weapons. It is past time for an expansion of background checks and longer waiting periods for those seeking to buy firearms.
These things have not happened. They should.
Background checks and waiting periods are common sense, right? As for assault weapons, why, exactly, do people need them? They don’t. But, they want them, just in case. Already, though, people are arguing you can’t take away their rights as citizens to own guns.
Three of Hawaii’s elected leaders in Congress, U.S. Rep. Colleen Hanabusa, Sen. Mazie Hirono and Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, all called for stricter guns laws in the wake of the mass shooting at a Florida high school.
If you think they are overreacting, think again. While prayer and moments of silence are welcome and needed, action is also needed from this country’s leaders to prevent gun violence and senseless deaths.
Consider these school shootings:
• Jan. 23, 2018: Two students were killed and 14 wounded by gunfire when a student opened fire before classes began at Marshall County High School in western Kentucky, authorities said. A grand jury is meeting to consider charging the 15-year-old boy as an adult.
• Dec. 7, 2017: Two students at Aztec High School in New Mexico were killed by a 21-year-old gunman disguised as a student. Police said the shooter later killed himself.
• Sept. 13, 2017: A 15-year-old boy was killed at Freeman High School in Rockford, Washington, and three female students were wounded when authorities say another 15-year-old boy opened fire with a handgun. A suspect was arrested.
• April 10, 2017: A gunman opened fire in the special education classroom of his estranged wife at North Park Elementary School in San Bernardino, California, killing her and an 8-year-old boy, and wounding another child. The gunman then fatally shot himself.
• Sept. 28, 2016: A 6-year-old boy was fatally shot on the playground of Townville Elementary School in South Carolina by a 14-year-old boy who had just killed his father, authorities said. Another child and a teacher were struck by bullets but survived. The teen was charged with murder.
• Sept 8, 2016: A 14-year-old girl died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound after shooting and wounding another female student at Alpine High School in West Texas.
• Dec. 14, 2012. A 20-year-old gunman killed 20 first-grade children and six educators inside Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, and then killed himself. He also fatally shot his mother before entering the school.
• Feb. 27, 2012: Three students were killed and two wounded in a shooting that started in a school cafeteria in Chardon, Ohio, as students waited for buses to other schools. Police charged a suspect, 17 at the time, as an adult.
• April 16, 2007: Twenty-three-year-old Seung-Hui Cho fatally shot 32 people in a dorm and a classroom at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, and then killed himself.
• April 20, 1999: Students Eric Harris, 18, and Dylan Klebold, 17, opened fire at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, killing 12 classmates and a teacher and wounding 26 others before killing themselves in the school’s library.
• Dec. 1, 1997: Three students were killed and five wounded at a high school in West Paducah, Kentucky. Michael Carneal, then 14, later pleaded guilty but mentally ill to murder and is serving life in prison.
Can we agree that the current gun laws are not effective? Probably not. Some will argue that gun laws will only keep the guns out of the hands of law-abiding citizens. Criminals, those with evil intent, will get them anyway, they say.
We can, as Attorney General Jeff Sessions said, study how mental illness and gun violence intersect.
“It cannot be denied that something dangerous and unhealthy is happening in our country,” Sessions said in an Associated Press story.
Again, studies are fine. But action, now, is needed, when it comes to this country’s gun-control laws.
Former President Barack Obama put it well in a few sentences on Twitter:
“We are grieving with Parkland. But we are not powerless. Caring for our kids is our first job. And until we can honestly say that we’re doing enough to keep them safe from harm, including long overdue, commonsense gun safety laws that most Americans want, then we have to change.”
If you think we’re off base, if you think this is threatening your Second Amendment rights, perhaps the words of Abbie Youkilis will convince you otherwise. Her niece, Jaime Guttenberg, was one of 17 people killed Wednesday in the shooting at a Parkland, Florida, high school.
In a letter that starts, “Dear America,” Youkilis calls for politicians to be held accountable for gun violence.
“My family does not want your hopes and prayers. We want your action,” she wrote to this country’s elected leaders.
We want your action, too.
What are you waiting for?
” While prayer and moments of silence are welcome and needed, action is also needed from this country’s leaders to prevent gun violence and senseless deaths. ”
Really, Bill? Have you forgotten that prayers are banned in schools and traditional values have been devalued? And you don’t think that the vilification of Judeo_Christian traditional values has anything to do with the ascendancy of evil and immorality? Aren’t all deaths from violence senseless…even those carried out on the orders of our so called leaders?
Furthermore, who are you to pass judgement that people don’t need what are euphemistically called assault rifles? ANY weapon can be used to assault. What about baseball bats, knives and don’t forget cars…do we not need them either?
RG DeSoto
why stop with banning the tool chosen by sick individuals? we should also ban alcohol, which is responsible for many more deaths.
Thank you.
Why? How would that have prevented this tragedy? Remember, the school was a gun-free zone, so there were no guns on campus at all. How about we actually enforce the thousands of gun laws already on the books instead of adding yet more, ineffective, laws?
Real Gunlover Desoto needs to learn that prayer is NOT banned in any school. Forcing someone participate in a prayer at school is not lawful. That’s a concept any self described lover of freedom should celebrate!
Knives? To paraphrase Chris Rock, if a deranged man had stabbed to death 55 people at a Las Vegas concert, then at least 53 of them deserved to die!
How about we start by requiring our government agencies to actually enforce the laws already on the books?
I agree 100%. Trump actually struck down safeguards against mentally ill people buying guns. We should regulate guns at least as carefully as we regulate driving cars, but we don’t. No law can guarantee that nothing bad will happen, but commonsense laws (that most Americans agree with), can reduce the level of violence. To those that say guns are but a tool — that’s true, but why allow more and more deadly tools to fall into the hands of those who should not have them. Hawaii already has strict gun laws, why not use Hawaii as a model for the rest of the nation?