As much as the Left likes to go after conservatives for supposedly offering nothing more than “thoughts and prayers” after a high-profile shooting, gun control advocates have their own set of trite and tired phrases that they trot out in response to these tragedies. “Do something” is probably the most common, but gun control fan and executive director of the Interfaith Alliance of Iowa Connie Ryan decided to run with the also overused “take action” in her column blaming “lawmakers, gunmakers, and the NRA” for the shooting in Perry, Iowa this week.
What specific action should be taken that would prevent a 17-year-old from illegally bringing a pump-action shotgun and a small caliber pistol to school and using it to shoot students and administrators? I’ll ask you, dear reader, because Connie doesn’t have a clue.
We must all continue to send our thoughts and prayers to families and communities impacted by gun violence. We must all continue to shout from the rooftop, “Enough is enough.” Schools must always be a refuge and places to learn and thrive. We must all learn.
And we must all take action. Now.
Contact your lawmakers. Every one of them. Demand their action and their voice in passing strong, unimpeachable, commonsense gun safety laws at the federal, state, and local levels that make a real difference for our children and our communities.
It is time. Contact all your lawmakers. Now.
What gun control law would have made a real difference to the students and staff who were the targets of a cowardly killer? You’d think someone penning a column that’s all about demanding action would be able to cite some specific policies or laws that aren’t in place, but Connie couldn’t come up with a single one.
At 17, the murderer was too young to buy a gun legally. Universal background checks wouldn’t have prevented this crime, nor would an “assault weapons” ban. What about some sort of storage mandate? Well, Iowa already has several provisions in effect, but like every other storage law it can only be enforced after the fact. Like most gun control measures, it’s punitive, not preventative.
Does Connie want us to contact our lawmakers and demand a ban on small-caliber handguns? Even the major gun control groups are no longer calling for that, at least not publicly. Pump-action shotguns, meanwhile, are probably the most socially and culturally acceptable firearm for anti-gun activists, especially those who want to play the “I’m a gun owner, but…” card.
If gun bans, universal background checks, and storage laws aren’t the answer, what’s Connie’s solution? She has plenty of stones to throw at those she disagrees with, from gun makers who she believes “overproduce and over-promote guns” because it’s all about the money to lawmakers who are supposedly “unwilling to listen to or take action on behalf of the American people” who keep electing them, but she’s completely tongue-tied when it comes to actual policies that could have prevented the tragic killing of a sixth-grader and the wounding of five other people in Perry, Iowa on Thursday.
Telling people to “Do something” and “take action” is so vacuous and meaningless that Ryan would have been better off saying nothing at all. If she thinks the Second Amendment should be repealed she should come out and say so, though she shouldn’t pretend for a second that is a “commonsense gun safety law” supported by large swathes of her fellow voters. It would also put her at odds with the mission statement of her organization, which includes safeguarding the rights of all Iowans. If that is indeed the case, then that means protecting their right to keep and bear arms as well.
If, on the other hand, she honestly believes that any of the policies I mentioned could have prevented Thursday’s shootings, then she’s not just failing to adhere to her organization’s mission statement, but has no idea what “commonsense” really means.
I can’t help but wonder why the head of an interfaith alliance didn’t offer what I’d consider to be the most obvious call to action from someone in her position: following the Golden Rule. Love one another. Look out for one another. Treat others the way you want to be treated. If we all did that the world would be a much better place, and while the odds of each of us living by that tenet are about as slim as 400 million firearms suddenly disappearing from the United States because they were banned, it would at least be a more useful suggestion than demanding people call their lawmakers and pass some unnamed bit of gun control legislation. That’s just the the gun control lobby’s version of “thoughts and prayers”, and it gets us nowhere.
