Special Commentary: Mourning the Victims in Aurora, Colorado
On behalf of the attorneys and staff at the PERENICH The Law Firm, our hearts and collective prayers go out to the families and victims of the Aurora, Colorado shootings. In such desperate times, when faced with such reckless hate from a disturbed individual (who will remain nameless in this blog as to not add to his warped drive for infamy) we as a people must hold together in solidarity and compassion.
At the same time, last Friday’s senseless acts and resulting horror once again raise the issue of gun violence in our country. As a nation, the United States has traditionally guarded its gun rights closely. The British colonists and pioneers inherently believed in the freedom to carry arms. After obtaining our independence from Great Britain, the Founding Fathers guaranteed gun rights for the citizens of our new nation through the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, and it has remained a well-defended right ever since.
However, there is a point where liberty begins to deteriorate into lunacy. The Second Amendment states, in full: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
The language of this brief yet powerful sentence has been fiercely debated by gun control advocates and gun freedom activists alike. In recent years, there has developed a mentality that any gun is safe to sell and that arguing against that notion is unconstitutional, even at the expense of public safety. We have let radical gun lobbyists pull the wool over our eyes by spinning a tale of government tyranny if an 18-year-old teenager is not allowed to purchase a military-grade assault rifle at his local gun store. As a country, we are devolving into a state of blind naiveté, or at best suspended common sense, because these weapons will, in most cases, be used for crime. Assault rifles should not be used for hunting, as any experienced hunter will tell you. That leaves two options: either the person buying such high-powered weapons is a gun enthusiast who loves to shoot mass magazines into a paper target, or he has sinister ambitions.
This blog is not advocating mass gun control but that we handle guns the way we handle our government, with reasonable checks and balances, as instructed by the Constitution. Stricter laws in all states on purchasing semi and fully automatic weapons will protect the rights of good people to purchase these weapons as well as prohibit those with serious problems from obtaining them. Such legislation could require, for example, psychological examinations, more extensive background checks, longer waiting periods, “good cause” for buying these weapons, and licenses. Even conservative pundit Bill O’Reilly suggested that it be “mandatory that any purchaser of a heavy weapon immediately register that weapon with the F.B.I.,” which demonstrates that the regulation of these weapons can be bipartisan.
In short, our government should make it as difficult as possible for criminals and the mentally deranged to obtain assault weaponry, explosive materials, and high capacity magazines. We as parents, sons, siblings, spouses and friends should not have to lose loved ones and endure such heartache because we lack the conviction to do the right thing and advocate for measures that will protect our children from violence. The possibility that we may have to wait a few extra weeks and undergo stricter evaluations in order to buy heavy weaponry would be an overly fair trade off if it meant preventing another tragedy like the one in Aurora, Colorado. Our Founding Fathers envisioned arms as a way for the citizenry to freely protect itself, but they lived in a time of muskets, not AK-47s, and they did not imagine arms to be a danger unto ourselves. So now we must act accordingly in a manner that will safeguard our liberties while simultaneously shielding us from violent criminal acts.