Opinion

Editorial: It's time for gun laws that protect our kids' rights

Wednesday, March 21, 2018 -- When it comes to addressing gun violence, particularly the disheartening and alarming near daily incidents involving school kids or n school grounds, talk is cheap. Effective action remains absent. Teenage students, in nationwide protests last week and more coming this weekend, are begging adults to take action now. Adults, in whose care they are entrusted, seem paralyzed or indifferent.

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DRAUGHON DRAWS: Fire, aim, ready
CBC Editorial: Wednesday, March 21, 2018; Editorial # 8280
The following is the opinion of Capitol Broadcasting Company

It is the all too familiar cycle of gun violence at schools we seem to watch again and again. Look at headlines over the last five days:

TUESDAY: Teen shoots girl in Maryland school, killed in confrontationl

When it comes to addressing gun violence, particularly the disheartening and alarming near daily incidents involving school kids or on school grounds, talk is cheap. Effective action remains absent.

Teenage students, in nationwide protests last week and more coming this weekend, are begging adults to take action now. Adults, in whose care they are entrusted, seem paralyzed or indifferent.

North Carolina Republicans in Congress, at every opportunity since 1999, have voted against every significant effort to restrict access to firearms or backed efforts to make access to them, including military-style assault weapons, easier.

Talk by state legislative leaders of arming volunteers to patrol school hallways and pistol-packing schoolmarms, frankly are window-dressing distractions from the real issues and solutions that need to be addressed.

We don’t want to diminish the efforts of those who are seriously trying to address the epidemic of gun violence. A group of North Carolina state legislators on Monday offered a series of common-sense proposals that should be at the forefront of the General Assembly’s agenda when it convenes in May.

But it is action in Washington that is most needed. Here’s the reality: Military-style rapid-firing assault rifles and the like – are too easy to get by too many people who have no business owning or using them. To many these guns are toys to be played with. They are not. If used as intended they will quickly kill human beings, lots of them. That, in fact, is what they were made to do.

Make no mistake, WE SUPPORT the Second Amendment – all of it. But the Second Amendment doesn’t provide an unlimited right to all weapons. Sensible limits protect everyone.

By far the most significant and easiest steps can be taken – AND MUST BE ENACTED – by our congressional representatives in Washington.

The time is now to:

  • Ban military assault-style weapons such as the AR-15 by renewing the dormant assault weapons ban. These weapons should only be in the hands of the military and law enforcement. Most North Carolinians support it.
  • Ban gadgets that can modify firearms into automatic weapons, such as the “bump stock.”
  • Require background checks prior to any gun sale, no matter where or how it takes place. Eliminate the gun-show (private-sale) loophole.
  • Keep guns out of the hands of domestic abusers.
  • Lift the prohibition on government-funded gun violence research.

These are not radical. They don’t impinge on any Second Amendment right. But, without spending a dime, they will save lives.

Here are some bills before Congress now, worthy of consideration in addressing gun safety and control:
H.R.5087: Assault Weapons Ban of 2018 and S.2095: Assault Weapons Ban of 2017 -- Both bills would ban the sale of semiautomatic assault-style rifles. They measures would also outlaw the sale of magazines that could hold more than 10 rounds. Current gun owners would not have to give up their weapons.
H.R. 4268: Gun Safety: Not Sorry Act of 2017 -- Introduced by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) to impose a seven-day waiting period on the purchase of semiautomatic firearms, silencers, armor piercing ammunition, or large capacity ammunition magazines.
S. 2009: Background Check Expansion Act – Introduced by Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) to amend a section of federal law to require a background check for every gun sale.
S. 1916: Automatic Gunfire Prevention Act –Introduced by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) to ban “Bump Stock” devices.
S. 2135: Fix NICS Act of 2017 -- Introduced by Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Sen. Chris Murphy (R-Conn.) to create a new "Domestic Abuse and Violence Prevention Initiative," report federal agencies that fail to enter anyone who should be prohibited from buying firearms into the system and setting up a process to verify the accuracy of current ecords and to keeps guns away from domestic abusers.

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