First Congress divided us. Now it’s killing us

Congress is sacrificing American families on the altar of the Second Amendment.

Politicians long have used the potent issue of gun control to divide us into one of two camps: firearms are evil, or firearms are good. Our senators and representatives in Washington long have done anything to stay in office and nothing to stop the carnage.

But is it only a two-sided issue?

No guns means no mass shootings, right? Well, no.

Lack of guns didn’t stop Timothy McVeigh in Oklahoma City, or the seldom-remembered 1927 dynamiting of a Bath, Mich., elementary school that killed 45 children.

__________

Want to keep gunmen out of our schools? Do these three things

For the first time, I cried over a mass killing

Arm teachers, but not with guns

Response to school shootings should target the guilty, not the innocent

__________

Maybe we should just ban crazy people.

Then we could feel safe allowing Wal-Mart to put a weapon in every hand holding enough money. And we could have a super-nanny state, turning us all into lay psychiatrists, ratting out Johnny to the local police about his magnifying glass and the anthill. Maybe a Department of Firearm Confiscation, tasked to seize every weapon it can find based on tips from an anonymous hot-line?

Obviously, that doesn’t work either. So we’re stuck. Mass murder by hand-held weapons must continue to be legally facilitated by the Second Amendment.

Or not.

What would James Madison, Second Amendment author, have thought of an AR-15’s awesome rate of fire versus a musket’s three balls a minute. If now shooters had only muskets and muzzle-loaded pistols to use in their horrifying attacks, how many children would still be alive and with their loving families?

The Supreme Court needs to consider the lethality of modern weapons in any new restrictions, but Congress must give it something to work with.

The slaughter continues, not because of the Second Amendment, but because Congress has split us into two camps: the first with paranoid visions of cold, dead hands wrapped around AR-15s, the second with childish dreams of a Pollyannaish utopia with no guns, perfect mental health and no explosives.

How many of you believe Congress will do something on its own?

How many of you still believe in the Easter bunny? Oh, wait. I already asked that question.

The State publishes a cross section of the letters we receive from South Carolinians in order to provide a forum for our community and also to allow our community to get a good look at itself, for good or bad. The letters represent the views of the letter writers, not necessarily of The State.

This story was originally published March 7, 2018 at 11:10 AM with the headline "First Congress divided us. Now it’s killing us."