Reasonable gun law restrictions not a radical idea

It happened again. A madman and guns equaled mass casualties in a public place. This time it wasn’t a school or a movie theater or a shopping mall, it was a dance club. As the ties to terrorism are fleshed out, and the families compose themselves for funerals and life without loved ones, we still have a staunch group of citizens and an extremely powerful lobbying group that has been ridiculously steadfast in their refusal to tighten gun laws. It is almost as absurd as those who want to ban weapons completely.

We have radical extremists from either side of the gun debate airing their voices. You know whose voice gets drowned out? The vast majority in the middle who think there needs to be protection of the Second Amendment with reasonable restrictions placed on owning firearms.

This shouldn’t be boiled down to a black/white debate. If laws are put in place to restrict gun ownership, that doesn’t mean somebody is balling up the Constitution and setting it ablaze. It often means they just want to make it more difficult to get a gun to ensure it will be used in a responsible manner.

So why does it seem like whenever calls for gun control are made, the National Rifle Association wants to brand all of us as vile traitors looking to smear the wishes of our forefathers and act like we are about ready to defect to the gun-free realm of England? If I had a dollar every time I heard the idea that giving away any freedom is giving away all of it, I’d have enough cash to own the Bank of England.

These staunch defenses of gun ownership are obscuring the real problem. We are increasingly dealing with people who have no humanity, who are willing to kill innocent people for whatever reason, be it mental illness, past grudges, terrorist ties or a combination of all three.

I fully support responsible gun ownership, and I’m not naive enough to believe tightening laws will prevent future attacks, but it has to be one part of the solution. If it isn’t part of the solution, one has to ask: “What will it take?” Is another attack the straw that breaks the camel’s back? Is it two? Ten?

At this point, only arbitrary lines on when it is time to act should happen, but it isn’t a matter of if, but rather when. So what is the harm in making that time now?

I don’t have the solutions, but I sure can tell what we are doing now isn’t working. We don’t need to be radical. We just need common sense, and that can be done without completely abdicating an amendment.

This story was originally published June 20, 2016 at 1:37 PM with the headline "Reasonable gun law restrictions not a radical idea."