Shooting should be call to arms on gun control

Editor,

Once again, as predictable as Christmas, some kid with a credit card and a subscription to a gun magazine has decided to load up and make the news. At such times, there’s a casualty we seldom consider: the way the broadcaster’s voice sounds too practiced, the way the grief spilling out of the survivors sounds too familiar and the way the murderers’ faces smirking back at us from the TV screen start to run together.

But after each of these horrific events, there’s one response you can always count on: the National Rifle Association spokesperson’s pathetic mantra “guns don’t kill people, people kill people,” running at us from all channels, that familiar bit of tortured logic that’s supposed to make the mental images of all those ambulances go away.

On the talk shows, we’ll be told that such tragic deaths remind us that we never know how much time we have left on Earth. That’s ridiculous. The victims of James Holmes, the alleged shooter, are dead because in America a man can order up 6,000 rounds of ammunition as easily as a box of nails, because in America we believe that making it hard to buy a weapon of mass murder puts an unnecessary burden on guys who want to shoot geese.

Such tragedies happen because America hasn’t learned that owning weapons of mass murder is, by nature, a crime against humanity, as sick and twisted as owning child pornography. These deaths should finally teach us that a man who owns such tools of mass destruction is not out to improve his marksmanship skills, but plans to fantasize about and practice and prepare for the act of killing dozens of people.

Holmes’ victims are not dead because of some sad twist of fate, but because Americans haven’t learned that the desire to purchase such weapons is akin to the desire to purchase your very own Auschwitz gas chamber or medieval torture device. Owning such weapons, together with thousands of rounds of ammunition, is not a sport. It’s a mental illness. And the fact that we all know someone who fancies such devices does not make it any less of an illness. Possessing guns that can quickly murder dozens of people is as vile as owning magazines that encourage sex with children, and should be treated as such, as a sick perversion.

What will prevent similar horrors in the future? Calling out the NRA spokesmen you’ll hear on the news over the next few days, the ones who say making loaded military-grade weapons illegal is wrong, because the crooks will get them anyway. Honestly, that makes as much sense as saying that crack cocaine should be legal, because people who want it will get it anyway. But instead, we’ll listen and say, “Oh, he makes a good point.”

So, are we really that saddened by the death of so many young people at a movie theater? Or do we regard their deaths as a fair price to pay for a man’s right to parade around like Rambo in his skivvies?

In any event, the people you hear today on the news justifying such “rights” are as much a menace to society as saying that owning kiddy porn is fine because the person might not do anything bad. In fact, the pro-gun arguments you’ll hear this week will only accomplish one thing: make certain that future James Holmeses will have a smooth path from thought to plan to action.

Oswin Lambert
Daily Lobo reader