Still No Answers

The last time "we the people" opined regarding much-needed improvements in both enforcing existing gun laws and strengthening the laws currently in place, it was after the June 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando.

Well, here we are again, after this week’s mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in nearby Parkland, where 17 individuals were murdered. The alleged shooter, a former student, was armed with smoke grenades and multiple weapons, including an AR-15.

Twenty months later, and there are still no answers. Correction; there are answers - what hasn’t been seen are solutions implemented to at least try and stem the epidemic of mass shootings in the United States.

According to a May 2012 poll conducted by Republican pollster Frank Luntz for the group Mayors Against Illegal Guns, gun-owning Americans, including National Rifle Association members, overwhelmingly support a raft of common-sense measures typically described as “gun control.” These include:

• Requiring criminal background checks on gun owners and gun shop employees;

• Prohibiting terrorist watch list members from acquiring guns;

• Mandating gun-owners tell the police when their gun is stolen;

• Concealed carry permits should only be restricted to individuals who have completed a safety training course and are 21 and older; and

• Concealed carry permits shouldn’t be given to perpetrators of violent misdemeanors or individuals arrested for domestic violence.

In addition, following the Sandy Hook shootings in December 2012, Newsweek/The Daily Beast special correspondent Michael Tomasky argued the right to bear arms can and should be regulated by the states - not by the federal government via the 2nd Amendment.

"Congress should tell states, in the wake of this surely worse epidemic of gun violence, that they must put some substance into the phrase 'well-regulated militia'," Tomasky said. "They must define 'well-regulated militia' to include not only the National Guard, but all legally registered gun-owners in the state. If they fail to do so, and in line with the precedent set by the drinking-age act, they risk losing 10 percent of their federal law-enforcement funding.”

There is some precedence to this. In the early 1980s, America was up in arms about drunk driving. After much debate and hand wringing about what to do, the focus was narrowed down to younger motorists, who tended to be the more irresponsible drivers. So Congress passed the National Minimum Drinking Age Act, which told states where the legal drinking age varied: you must raise the drinking age in your state to 21 by a specific date. And if the states refused, the federal government would deny them 10 percent of their highway money.

"Threatening financial penalties should make states get in line pretty fast," Tomasky said. "They’ll all comply, as they did in the 1980s. What governor is going to want to be responsible for losing 10 percent of his law-enforcement money? Of course they will comply to varying degrees. Alabama will make very few requirements of these new militia members, while northern states - surely Connecticut itself, among others - will issue more stringent requirements. And over time, we’ll see results."

It's an interesting concept.

Can there be change? Will there be change? More specifically, will there be meaningful change - the type that both appeases the gun rights advocates and those who want to prevent the seemingly random acts of violence that result in anywhere from one murder to a massacre? I think the answers are: (1) definitely; (2) yes; and (3) maybe. The key part is developing and accepting a philosophical adjustment that our national culture can both buy into and implement. Gun control is one of those "hot button" topics that eludes a ton of emotion, emotion that can (and often does) override logic.

Recent events, culminating (well, hopefully culminating) with the Marjory Stoneman Douglas mass killing, have called for an adjustment in the United States' citizenry's social contract. Time to see what the actual result of this ideological shift leads to ... for our individual and collective future.