We need change to stop the pervasive threat of gun violence

SHARE We need change to stop the pervasive threat of gun violence
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An activist holds up a placard during a rally at the Florida State Capitol building to address gun control on Thursday in Tallahassee, Florida. (Photo by Don Juan Moore/Getty Images)

We were still trying to wrap our heads and our hearts around the shooting death of a beloved police commander, husband and father last week when news broke one day later of a horrific school shooting in Florida that left 17 students and teachers dead.

OPINION

We had barely begun to grieve Paul Bauer on Tuesday when our attention was pulled away by Wednesday’s news reports containing the piercing sounds of bullets fired from a semi-automatic rifle inside a high school 1,300 miles away and images of hundreds of grieving and shocked parents and teenagers.

Bauer was shot six times Tuesday afternoon outside the Thompson Center during a struggle with a man who’d run from police officers. Police said the man, who was arrested and charged with murder, was armed with a loaded 9 mm handgun with an extended clip.

At Marjory Stoneman High School in Parkland, Florida, the weapon was an AR-15, a rifle that was first used by soldiers in the Vietnam War. It’s the same gun used in some of the deadliest mass killings we’ve seen in recent years – the Las Vegas concert in 2017, the Orlando nightclub in 2016, the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas in 2017, and Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut in 2012.

We can’t predict what firearm will be used in the next shooting that knocks us back on our heels. Maybe it doesn’t matter. Sadly – frustratingly – what we can predict with certainty is that there will be more shootings.

In the nearly 24 hours that passed between the shooting that killed Commander Bauer in Chicago and the massacre that killed 17 in Parkland, an estimated 96 other Americans died from some kind of gun violence – homicides, accidental shootings, self-inflicted – according to statistics and national averages.

Chicago saw 650 gun deaths last year, nearly two for each day of the year.

Maybe these deaths were noted by the media, maybe they weren’t. Maybe the loss of life generated outrage, maybe it didn’t. Perhaps a politician mechanically offered the victims’ loved ones thoughts and prayers – as so many of us do after mass shootings. Most likely not, though.

What I know to be certain is this: Gun violence and the proliferation of guns threaten our well-being. We must enact changes. Poll after poll confirms that Americans support this.

There is wide public support for sensible gun laws. Following the Las Vegas massacre last year, 64 percent of voters indicated they support stricter gun laws.

A poll following the Parkland school shooting indicated most Americans believe stricter gun laws could have stopped it from occurring and also that most believe neither Congress nor the president is doing enough to stop gun violence.

Politicians who offer thoughts and prayers but refuse to discuss gun laws answer to the gun lobby and the NRA, not the voters, and, shamefully, not to the victims and their families. Sympathy for victims of gun violence has its place, but we need not offer it as though we have no other options. We don’t have to live this way. No other country in the Western world does.

Gun homicide rates are 25 times higher in the United States than in other high-income countries. We make up 5 percent of the world’s population, but one-third of the world’s mass shootings happen here. This is a uniquely American problem, and there is no reason for it to continue.

Every year for 15 years I have sponsored legislation to license gun dealers in Illinois. It finally passed the Senate last year but has yet to reach the governor’s desk, even though hundreds more victims have died of gun violence. This is a commonsense measure to help stop gun violence while protecting the rights of law-abiding gun owners. The House has the bill right now and can do the right thing by approving it.

Prayer certainly has its place in a society plagued with violence, but I implore my fellow lawmakers who turn to faith and spirituality to consider the Bible verse that reads, “faith without work is dead.” No matter how sincere the thoughts and prayers, they are meaningless if we fail to follow up with necessary action.

Sen. Don Harmon is a Democrat from Oak Park and president pro tempore of the Illinois Senate.


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