Keep Gun Laws In Focus For 2020

By FRANK LINGO

With the US leading the world by far in COVIS cases, and after the worst economic drop in a quarter in recorded history, it’s easy to lose sight of another long-term issue: gun law reform.

An Aug. 4 New York Times article outlined the challenges facing the movement to end gun violence. One point it made is that the movement played a strong role in the 2018 mid-term elections. Another is that the turnout of young voters (who care greatly about gun violence) doubled from the previous mid-term in 2014.

While a collateral effect of the virus is that mass shootings are down significantly, let’s not forget that they could come roaring back. After the horrific 2018 school shooting in Parkland, Fla., the March For Our Lives movement gained tremendous momentum. Lately, that energy may have waned a bit, but gun-reformers aren’t about to forget how most Republican lawmakers did nothing but feebly offer their thoughts and prayers for the victims.

Moscow Mitch McConnell and his Republican cronies nationwide have been deeply out of touch with the American people for decades.

According to a September 2019 Pew Research Center survey, 93% of Democrats and 82% of Republicans favor universal background checks, which would end the giant loopholes of gun shows and private sales. Also, 69% of Americans want to ban military-style assault weapons and 71% favor banning high-capacity ammunition magazines.

So there are bad people everywhere, right? How do other countries stop them from committing mass murders? They make guns hard to get, not easy like we do.

Politico reported on May 1, 2020, that Canada had a mass shooting on April 18 and 19 in Nova Scotia, and less than two weeks later, the Canadian government banned 1,500 models of assault-style weapons.

In America, we’ve had these shooting rampages for over half a century. No other democracy in the world comes close to our murder rate. And still, Moscow Mitch blocks sensible gun controls.

The evidence mounts that Republicans care little about protecting our children from mass murders like Parkland and Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., if it means defying the will of their big donors in the National Rifle Association. Their judgment is further faulty as Trump, our esteemed Oaf of Office, and several Republican governors favor children going back to school amid humongous spikes of Corona infections.

Now, executives of the most influential gun lobbying group, the NRA, have been implicated in massive corruption by New York State’s Attorney General. It’s no surprise that these guys are self-serving creeps since their organization’s mission has been to stonewall reasonable reform for weapons used in repeated horrifying attacks on innocent people.

Remember that we HAD a ban on assault rifles that was narrowly passed in the Senate and signed by President Clinton in 1994. The Washington Post considered the data in an August 2019 article. According to research by Dr. Louis Klarevas of Teacher’s College of Columbia University, the number of people dying in mass shootings fell by 43% during the subsequent 10 years, compared to the previous 10 years. This was despite the assault ban being riddled with loopholes that allowed copycat weapons.

In 2004, under President George W. Bush, the assault weapons ban expired and then, guess what! There was a 239% increase in deaths from mass shootings in the following 10 years.

It’s clear that guns, especially mass murderers’ weapon of choice, the assault rifle, are a grave threat to public safety. It’s scary enough that about 100 million Americans own guns, usually handguns for personal protection, or shotguns and deer rifles, but it’s downright terrifying that several million own assault rifles. These guns were made for war. They are designed specifically to kill a great many people as quickly as possible. No civilian has any right to own one or carry one into a school, a church, a store or a nightclub.

In this 2020 election, the most important in the history of our nation, let’s remember the party that fights for gun reform (Democrats) and the party that resists gun reform (Republicans).

Frank Lingo, based in Lawrence, Kansas, is author of the novel “Earth Vote.” Read a free excerpt of Lingo’s novel at EarthVote.world. Email lingofrank@gmail.com.

From The Progressive Populist, September 1, 2020

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