Some guns are weapons of mass destruction. Delaware should ban them.https://www.delawareonline.com/story/opinion/contributors/2018/02/21/some-guns-weapons-mass-destruction-delaware-should-ban-them/356197002/Columbine, 1999. A “once-in-a-lifetime” mass shooting that left our country in disbelief. We thought it could never happen again.
Until Red Lake Senior High, 2005. Or West Nickel Mines School, 2006. Or Virginia Tech, 2007. Or Oikos University, 2012. More and more high school and college students across America entered classrooms and never emerged.
And then one day twenty young children and six brave educators died inside Sandy Hook Elementary.
Since then, our country has endured more than 200 school shootings, eight of these being classified as “mass shootings.” Many of these atrocities were enabled by the needless and ubiquitous availability of high-capacity, military-grade firearms, which have been legal to own since Congress allowed the assault weapons ban to expire in 2004.
Automatic and semi-automatic assault rifles and pistols are, simply put, weapons of mass destruction.
These weapons did not exist when the Founding Fathers discussed the right to bear arms. Our forefathers couldn’t have imagined the devastation that a single weapon could inflict on 17 high schoolers – or 20 grade schoolers, or 32 college kids, or 58 concert-goers — at once.
Weapons like the AR-15 and M-16 are meant for the military, not civilians.
Unsurprisingly, a large majority of Americans feel the same way. A 2017 Pew Research Center study found that 48 percent of gun owners and 77 percent of non-gun owners support an assault weapons ban.
For ten years, a federal assault weapons ban reduced mass shootings by almost one-third nationwide. Delaware’s own Mike Castle implored Congress to reauthorize the ban as its expiration date approached; however, federal lawmakers failed to act, leaving states to implement their own assault weapon bans.
Many explored the idea, but few took action.
For too long, leaders across America have neglected to pass any meaningful legislation addressing assault weapons. Only a handful of states have banned automatic and semi-automatic rifles, pistols, and high-capacity magazines. It should come as no surprise that these states have some of the lowest rates of gun deaths nationwide.
Lawmakers in Connecticut, for example, identified and implemented a series of gun control reforms in the wake of Sandy Hook — including an assault weapons ban. Consequently, gun deaths are currently trending downward in Connecticut.
Today, I call on Delaware’s General Assembly to ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. We would be remiss to allow another legislative session to pass without action.
Reform-minded lawmakers in Dover have attempted to champion this effort in the past, to no avail. This legislative body needs to stand up for the safety of our schools and Delaware’s communities.
We must not wait until the unthinkable makes the stakes clear. We cannot continue to offer our thoughts, prayers, watered-down policy solutions, and assertions that we shouldn’t address gun policies while people are grieving. Until we take these weapons of mass destruction off the streets, our efforts to address any combination of mental illness and gun ownership will be in vain.
How many more mothers and fathers will put their children on the school bus for the last time? How many little boys and girls have tearfully asked their parents to stay home from school because they no longer feel safe in their classrooms?
We owe it to our nation’s innocent school children and their parents to treat classrooms, movie theaters, shopping malls, and churches as sanctuaries of civility and normalcy, not war zones.
I am profoundly inspired by the courage and resilience of student activists who are speaking out in Florida and planning protests to commence this week. On the day of the shooting, they were victims; today, they are survivors and leaders. Now is exactly the time to stand with them and follow their lead.
I urge you to contact your state legislators today and ask them to support an assault weapons ban. Applaud and support those who show the courage to stand up to the gun lobby, and put pressure on the undecided. Election year or not, Delawareans deserve to go to sleep at night knowing that their leaders are doing everything imaginable to eliminate the chance that any of our communities become the next Parkland.
Chris Johnson is a candidate for Delaware Attorney General. He is an attorney who has worked in both the public and private sectors, is a board member of the Delaware Center for Justice and a vice chair of the Wilmington Democratic Party.
