No guns under 21
31st May 2022 · 0 Comments
By Christopher Tidmore
Contributing Columnist
Last Tuesday, after a gunman killed nineteen children and two teachers in a Texas elementary school, Sen. Chris Murphy stood at his U.S. Senate podium and implored his colleagues to do something to stop mass shootings.
“I’m here on this floor to beg,” said Murphy, pressing his palms together in prayerful supplication. “To literally get down on my hands and knees and beg my colleagues: Find a path forward here. Work with us to find a way to pass laws that make this less likely.”
“I understand my Republican colleagues will not agree to everything that I may support,” Murphy continued. “But there is a common denominator that we can find.”
The Connecticut Senator himself, though, immediately rejected a common denominator, ruling out a vote on the Manchin-Toomey background checks bill because it had too many “sweeteners” for the NRA (referring to the legislation’s exceptions on background checks for sales between friends and family). His sudden U-turn from his ardent plea underscored the fundamental difficulty in passing any sort of effective gun control legislation. Too often, the perfect becomes the enemy of the good.
Meanwhile, there have been 27 school shootings in the last 12 months. May 24th’s brutal rampage of an 18-year-old with an AR-15 at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas came just a week after an equally sickening set of murders by another 18-year-old in Buffalo, New York with a handgun.
We have a weird talent in America to look at every gun regulation as a slippery slope in the loss of liberty—and people DIE because of it. The inability to find a reasonable compromise on keeping guns out of the hands of young people has literally caused blood to flow in the streets. Perhaps, though, in that window of age stands a gun compromise with the potential of passage. The United States could make it illegal for those under the age of 21 to own a handgun or an assault weapon, outside of military service.
The Left wishes to ban assault weapons and severely curtail the ownership of handguns across the board. As President Biden notes, “You don’t need these weapons to hunt.” The Right views such proposals as an infringement on a fundamental constitutional right (and seeks answers like arming teachers). The vitriol on the two sides makes conversation, much less compromise, impossible. Such inabilities to communicate prove less surprising upon reflection, though. The gun debate is a weird mirror reflection of the abortion debate—where a woman’s Constitution privacy rights war against protecting fundamentals of life. Viability compromises are rejected by both sides. Meeting halfway is viewed as surrender.
The only possible emotional difference, however, is that all Americans should agree that school children getting shot stands beyond the pale of a civilized society—or at least so our Editors would hope. It is notable that few dispute that these shooters tend to be disturbed young men under the age of 21.
A 2002 Department of Education study found that 69 percent of those committing violent acts using a gun within the school setting were between 10 and 19 years of age, and 15 percent of the gun violence acts were committed by people between the ages of 20 and 29. Interestingly, 76 percent of the perpetrators were Caucasian, often no criminal record and usually without a psychological evaluation which could have shown tendencies to violence. Red Flag laws stand as a potential area of bipartisan compromise, yet neither they—nor conventional background checks—would have stopped virtually any of these school shootings.
Nevertheless, this factual reply from conservatives far from justifies their legislative inaction. Progressives likewise fall into their own political trap when suggesting to absolutely ban weapons out of existence as a reply. As a result, every potential reform gets filibustered into maintaining the status quo—only to be re-litigated on the Senate floor when the next massacre happens.
Ironically, polls reveal that the average American, even many Republican gun owners, when asked if someone under the age of 21 should be able to buy a handgun or an assault weapon or the ammunition for either, most reply, “No!” Gun rights advocates often are just as worried about unstable young people owning guns as any gun control advocate.
Raising the gun ownership age to equaling the drinking age would have saved the lives of 10 shoppers in Buffalo and 19 children in Texas. Surveys suggest such a reform proves both popular—and constitutionally acceptable —with voters in both parties. Plenty of rights are not allowed until one’s majority. There’s a chance to create a bipartisan coalition to raise the age of legal gun ownership.
The danger is that the NRA will scream “slippery slope.” The only way to get around that is for Progressives to trim their ambitions— and their rhetoric. No matter how good the arguments may be to ban assault weapons, extended gunstocks, and other forms of weaponry designed to institute mass gunfire, the mere threat of doing so alienates those who view this debate through the lens of defending constitutional liberties.
Moreover, the ongoing queries as to whether the U.S. Constitution truly defends gun ownership proves about as effective an argument for swaying those that might be reasonable on the Right as questioning “the right to privacy” does for the Left on abortion. The ideological ends of the spectrum shut off the debate. That must end.
Wasting another year without any changes will just increase the body count of innocent people. It’s time for both sides to give a little. However ideologically opposed, a chance for agreement exists that if an 18-year-old cannot drink legally, he or she probably should not be able to own a handgun or an AR-15. It’s time for the Congress to act on this modest reform.
This article originally published in the May 30, 2022 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
