What Will it Take?

Published: March 26, 2021

By Jim Lichtman
Image
Read More

What will it take for some Americans to stop believing the false narrative that Democrats want to abolish the Second Amendment?

photo: Reuters

In 1996, the Dunblane primary school shooting left 16 fifth and sixth graders and the teacher that tried to protect them, dead. The public outcry was loud and long. In 1997, UK’s prime minister, John Major, passed the Firearms Act banning all cartridge ammunition handguns, except 22 caliber single-shot weapons.

In 2012, the Sandy Hook school shooting left 20 first-graders dead. However, the horrific mass killing was not enough to successfully pass meaningful legislation.

What stops common sense gun laws?

Former Ohio governor, John Kasich, appearing on CNN (Mar. 24) stated that he voted “…in support of the assault weapons ban all the way back in 1994. But look,” he added, “here’s the problem with this. There’s not a public uproar over this. It doesn’t last for any period of time. And the media focuses on it, and then it fades away. And it’s never in the public consciousness for a long period of time.”

Kasich hits the nail squarely on the head. It’s not enough to blame legislators, citizens must get involved and demand change.

“When the heat is on in the state of Florida after the terrible tragedy down there, you began to see changes but it has to come from the bottom up, Kate, and there’s not a sustained effort to try to change these laws,” Kasich tells CNN anchor, Kate Bolduan,

A Gallup poll, “(Asked of those dissatisfied with U.S. gun policy) Would you like to see gun laws in this country made more strict, less strict or remain as they are?”

In 2021, 42 percent want to keep things as they are; 41 percent want stricter laws.

With an even divide, as a country, we have to ask ourselves, how many more mass killings do Americans want to live through?

“I believe the red flag law, which says if you see somebody who you think is unstable through a court [order], you have the ability to take their gun away until they are stabilized. That should be something everyone passes, everybody supports. It makes no sense that they don’t.

“…there’s a significant number of people in the public who don’t support this change in these laws. They say, this is Second Amendment, I want to protect myself if somebody comes in my home, and that’s what goes back and forth.

“…sometimes it takes a long time to get the civil rights legislation through, to get women suffrage through. Kate, I’m just going to tell you, because you want it from me straight, if the 10,000 people had gathered on the lawn of the state house in the middle of my pushing through [gun legislation], we would have been successful. We couldn’t get them. They didn’t show up. And I am not blaming the people on this… they’ve got a lot they have to do. I’m just saying that the dynamic of change, of big change, gun changes are big. You can get some things done, but big things that have to be done, there has to be a push from the bottom up.

“… you’ve got to get pro-gun people and people who want these gun control laws to sit in a room and reach agreement. We did that. We reached some significant agreement but then we didn’t have the support to actually jam it through. It’s very frustrating and it drives me crazy and, yes, we should expect more out of our leaders.

“You know,” Kasich says, “maybe people will have a sense in their heart and in their head that we can do something here.”

What will it take to change the status quo?

Comments

  1. Good question Jim. I hope we as Americans are not getting to the point of accepting these shootings as normal. We don’t need assault rifles which can unload 30 rounds in seconds to protect ourselves. They say it may have to get worse before it can better, but I would like to think it is as bad as we, individualistic, distracted Americans can allow.

Leave a Comment