Mount Morris Township, Michigan and Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania are the
latest places linked by murders committed with firearms. The two
tragedies, which occurred on succeeding days, Feb. 29 and March 1, 2000,
incited the anti-freedom Democrats and their media cohorts to restart
their barrage against the firearm and all those that own firearms. It's
easier and simpler to blame guns and gun owners than the conditions that
spawned these crimes.
It is difficult to go after the six-year-old perpetrator in Michigan.
After all, he was only a first-grade boy who decided to settle his
argument with a six-year-old classmate. He took a stolen gun that was
lying around his home to school and killed his schoolmate, Kayla Renee
Rolland. In Pennsylvania, the adult perpetrator demonstrated an obvious
bias against "white folks," killing only those that met his racial
prejudices.
The day after the Mount Morris Township tragedy, a website devoted to
kids put up a page about kids and guns. Clicking on the
page,
I got a feeling of deja vu. They were offering the same advice that the
NRA has been offering for over a decade. The NRA program, the Eddie
Eagle GunSafe program, has a very simple safety message. If you see a
gun, STOP, DON'T TOUCH, LEAVE THE AREA, TELL AN ADULT. Teachers and
police officers support the NRA program, and even the FBI recommends it
to FBI agents to keep their kids from reaching for a service firearm.
Although NRA started the program long before it was fashionable to
promote gun safety, many schools are reluctant to use it because of NRA
sponsorship. More information about the Eddie Eagle program can be found
on the NRA Eddie Eagle website.
The tragedy is that neither kidexchange.com nor the NRA's Eddie Eagle
GunSafe program can counter the environment in which the six-year-old
black boy lived. It was not a small white house with a picket fence, but
a crack house. His family members are all criminals: His father is in
jail; his mother, a drug addict, who had been evicted from her house;
and his uncle, a felon. The uncle and other fugitives, criminals and
drug addicts inhabited the house in which he lives. In addition, our
juvenile murderer already had a "history" of violence during his short
school career. His previous attack on another child with a pencil had
been punished by suspension from school. After the first violent attack,
didn't anybody care? Why hasn't anyone asked why this child was allowed
to live in such conditions? Didn't anybody send child protective
services to check on him after he attacked his first victim? How could
he remain with criminal relatives?
The need isn't for trigger-lock laws. We need a school system and a
community to keep its children away from a life of violence. The village
that was raising this child not only failed him and Kayla Rolland, but
every last one of its children. Villages don't promote responsibility,
families do.
A wonderful
article by David
Horowitz in the online Salon magazine sums up the sad but farcical
nature of the political response to this horror.
- Since the point is evidently not obvious to liberals, let me make
it clear: Clinton might as well be calling a conference to develop a
Voodoo spell to stop incidents like the Michigan tragedy as propose a
new gun law. Why would a family of criminals, like the one actually
responsible for the murder of Kayla Rolland, observe a trigger-lock law
if it was passed? The inhabitants of this crack house do not observe
laws. They live to break laws. Child abuse is against the law. The
little emotionally disturbed six-year-old who committed the murder was
abused by his mother, his criminal father, his criminal uncle, and every
adult that entered that crack house. That is already against the law.
Calling for a law to require parents who stash their kids in crack
houses to put trigger locks on the stolen guns lying around is a sick
joke. An even sicker joke would be to expect liberal Democrats or the
liberal press to acknowledge this obvious fact.
Democrats' use of the inter-racial killing of a six-year-old to
attack lawful gun owners and to beat up on the National Rifle
Association is obscene. But better than that, it is an exercise in the
very denial that provides liberalism with a reason to exist. The purpose
of the cry for gun control is to allow liberals once again to close
their eyes (and the nation's) to the serious moral problems in the inner
city that create these tragedies, and to avoid holding the individuals
responsible accountable for their crimes. We don't want to blame the
"victims" do we?
Nevertheless, the ban-the-gun cabal is already hard at work
blaming guns, gun owners and the NRA. After answering a reporter's
question whether gun control should be an election issue, President
Clinton answered, "Oh, I do believe that ... it's nothing but an issue,
so there's no need for name-calling or anger or anything else." Yet, the
very next day on NBC's Today program he ignored his own advice by
blaming the NRA for blocking gun control legislation and thus helping to
cause the Michigan tragedy. His defamatory comment against the NRA was,
"They're basically against anything that requires anybody to do
(anything) as a member of society that helps make it safer."
Not missing any provocation to beat the drums for gun control,
anti-gun senators held press conferences again pushing for the
Lautenberg-Clinton-Gore version of the Juvenile Justice Bill (S. 254).
Getting caught in the frenzy for gun control, Senator Frank Lautenberg
even admitted that his goal was not just to register all guns bought at
gun shows, but instead to "shut down gun shows." In addition, they
promoted their "Child Access Prevention" law, which would give
government bureaucrats the authority to design the standard for the
acceptable safe gun storage devices, including safes.
All these legislative proposals have no relevance to the tragedy in
Mount Morris. Everyone in that crack house was breaking laws with
serious penalties. It's inconceivable that a trigger-lock law would
deter a drug addict from leaving a stolen gun lying around. Current
Michigan law already makes the gun "owner" liable for misuse by a child.
That law didn't prevent the tragedy and neither did Michigan's gun-free
schools law. Criminals and six-year-olds don't obey laws.
Thank goodness 49 senators understood the futility of all these
proposals. Last Thursday, using the Michigan tragedy as a catalyst,
Senator Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., proposed a non-binding resolution to an
education bill moving on the floor of the U.S. Senate. Her resolution
called on Congress to speed up consideration of the Senate Juvenile
Justice bill and send it to Clinton by a specific date. The resolution
failed by a vote of 49-49. Due to their respective campaign schedules,
both Senator McCain and Vice-President Al Gore were unavailable to vote.
On Tuesday, President Clinton convened a meeting with leaders on
Capitol Hill to urge enactment of a program that not only included the
Senate Juvenile Justice bill provisions, but registration of individual
gun owners complete with photo ID. The meeting provided photo
opportunities for the anti-gun politicians and caused John Conyers, the
man most likely to become Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee
should the Democrats regain control of the House, to predict that
Republican inaction would cause them grief at the polls. Later that day,
playing to the media, Clinton even entertained Kayla's mother at the
White House.
2000 promises to be a long year of partisan dueling over gun control
proposals. Capitol Hill Democrats will continue to try adding gun
control proposals to any legislation, especially in the United States
Senate, where the rules allow adding non-germane amendments. There are
244 days until the November election and fewer days until Congress
adjourns, but when candidates and the media enflame anti-firearms
hysteria using unspeakable human tragedies, I fear for the safety of the
rights of law-abiding, responsible gun owners. Maybe lawmakers should
take a tip from Eddie Eagle when faced with gun legislation. STOP, DON'T
TOUCH, LEAVE THE AREA.