Fecteau: A Morbid Milestone

Monday, June 13, 2016

Matt Fecteau, GoLocalProv Guest MINDSETTER™

 

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We have reached a particularly morbid, yet historical milestone. This past Sunday was the deadliest mass shooting in US history.  At the time of this writing, an ISIS-inspired madman with a military-style weapon walked into a nightclub in Orlando, killed around 50 people, and wounded over 50 more people. This is just another example of why we need to rein in the accessibility of guns. 

When it comes to everything else, the United States has responded by changing its laws. After the Oklahoma City bombing, the United States made it more difficult to acquire the chemicals needed for such explosives.  After 9/11, the United States passed laws that made locking the cockpit door mandatory. With gun violence, the United States remains in a state of paralysis.

In the wake of the mass shootings in recent years, with no action from Congress, President Barak Obama introduced -- I argue largely nominal -- changes to our gun laws through executive actions such as making it mandatory to acquire a license and run a background check for a “business.”  However, private sales remain relatively unregulated thanks to an NRA-supported law called Firearm Owners’ Protection Act passed in 1986.  

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Some have argued that the 2nd Amendment says the right to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” However, the part that is commonly left out is “A well-regulated militia…” In other words, regulation is a large part of the 2nd Amendment.  As a society, we are the only ones preventing stringent laws to curtail gun violence. 

In fact, even deceased Supreme Court Justice and conservative icon Antonin Scalia stated, “Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited.” Unfortunately, we continue to maintain the faux belief that gun rights are absolute (wrong, there is a Fully Automatic Weapons Ban that makes owning such weapons illegal for most civilians).

Last year, I wrote the accessibility of firearms was the problem, and laid out a number of possible answers to gun violence. In response, I received the same regurgitated talking points flooding my Smartphone with the ever popular, yet bland, “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” For all the millions the gun industry spends on lobbying, the least it could do is invest in novel talking points; the mounting body justifies as much. 

Why didn’t this maniac in Orlando use a baseball bat to commit mass murder? Simple, guns make it easier to kill people in a short duration of time with such ruthless effectiveness. Despite what the NRA hilariously defines as an assault weapon (any weapon used in an assault), an assault style weapon – which would be defined in starkly differently terms in federal legislation -- is more capable of causing mass murder. 

Gun rights advocates usually argue that most of the laws introduced will do little to curb horrendous gun violence. However, what is their solution to gun violence? More guns? There are almost 310 million civilian firearms in the the United States.  Ban Gun free zones? Then, should I just take a gun with me everywhere? To Church? To a nightclub? College? Wouldn’t adding more guns to a volatile situation make it far worse? 

We need to find realistic answers to gun violence, especially mass shootings. While we cannot change our laws overnight, it is long passed to due to have a serious conversation about gun violence.  At the least, can we agree that guns should be out of reach of the mentally unstable and violent? Please. 

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Matt Fecteau ([email protected]), of Pawtucket, Rhode Island, lost to U.S. Rep. David Cicilline in last 2014’s Democratic primary. He is a former White House national security intern and Iraq war veteran.

 

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