Blog: If Not Now, When Will We Pass Sensible Gun Laws?

This is not a rant but it could be. Every time this country experiences a mass shooting, there is quick talk about strengthening gun laws and then the National Rifle Association (NRA) steps in and the effort fails. Will this time be different?

On Oct. 1, in Las Vegas, a well-armed marksman shot into a country music festival killing nearly 60 people and wounding hundreds more. According to those who knew him, he was not mentally impaired nor had he ever been incarcerated. So background checks probably wouldn’t have stopped him from accumulating the guns he used.

Thorough investigations have uncovered that the attack was well planned and the gunman had considered alternate sites. When he decided on the music festival, he spent days carrying into the Mandalay Bay suitcases full of rifles and ammunition, tripods and cameras, everything he thought would inflict maximum damage in the shortest amount of time.

I refuse to name the shooter because I think he wanted recognition—to go out in a blaze of mayhem. He apparently shot himself as law officers approached his room. 

Every time this country experiences a mass shooting, and there have been many more incidents than we’ve heard about, we all ask why anyone would be able to amass such an arsenal, to kill so many people he never even knew. 

And then the politicians step in. It’s no secret that many congress members have had their campaigns paid for by the gun lobby, so it’s no surprise when they say this isn’t the time to discuss gun control. 

But if not now, when?

This time politicians are focused on something called a bump stock, which converts a semi-automatic rifle into one that shoots like a machine gun. It is possible that even the NRA might support a ban on this device. But maybe they’re just lulling us into thinking they will.

Many experts say such a ban would be a small, incremental deterrent that would have little effect on mass violence. But it could be a start to a movement that would bring the U.S. closer into line with all other industrialized countries. Possibly.

Many columnists, brighter than I, have recently written on this subject. Most support some form of gun control. Some politicians refuse to allow any infringement of all citizens’ right to bear arms (for their own or their families’ protection). 

However, most experts agree that keeping guns in the home puts children at risk for fatal accidents—not to mention domestic violence and suicide. When tempers flare, if a gun is at hand, it’s too easy to do irreparable harm.

I grew up in a relatively safe community where very few people felt the need of a gun for safety. I think my grandfather had a gun for duck hunting but I never saw it. So when I married a war veteran and discovered he kept a gun under his pillow it was true culture shock.

When we bought a ranch and moved out of the city I suddenly understood why rural folks needed guns. It was possible to wait as much as three days for Animal Control or any governmental aid to arrive. My son once had to shoot an obviously rabid dog (after calling a vet more than an hour away). It made him sick but it was the only way to protect our dogs and children.

My husband bought me a .45 automatic and a permit to carry it and said I must keep it in the car or truck when I hauled horses. In the event of an accident I would have what I needed to dispatch a seriously wounded animal, particularly one that was not a candidate for surgery. Fortunately, I never had to use it.

I had a .22 revolver loaded with bird shot that I kept in my garden bucket to shoot rattle snakes. The Pacific rattler is basically a torpid sort, usually resting coiled up out of the way, but once I saw one making a beeline for a litter of baby puppies. I shot it just as it reached the chicken wire enclosure and had I been just a second slower, it would have been too late.

So much for why folks who live in rural areas need a gun—I get that. But somehow it should have set off an alert when the Las Vegas gunman accumulated more than 40 guns, ammunition and explosives, all of which were found in his Mesquite home and his Las Vegas hotel room. Even though his record was squeaky clean, nobody needs that many guns for self-protection or to go hunting.

One of the columnists who has written about this issue, Nicholas Kristof, who regularly writes for The New York Times, set out half a dozen possible laws that might be passed that would work well and not infringe on any citizen’s right to bear arms.

We can only hope that politicians and their NRA benefactors pay attention.