Emotional Response to Horrific Killings Will Lead to New Assault Weapon Ban

Most of those calling for a total or partial ban on guns in the United States have no regard for the majority American opinion on gun control or for the Second Amendment to the US Constitution. Their demand is an emotional reaction to the horrific murder of 26 people, including 20 children 6 and 7 years old, at the Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown in Connecticut. The act of the deranged but highly intelligent young man was carried out with two pistols and a semi-automatic rifle. The popular logic is simple in the extreme -- a killer murdered 20 tiny children with a semi-automatic gun, so we need to outlaw guns, or at least any type of automatically firing gun because this will prevent further mass murders of the Sandy Hook type. Nothing could be farther from the truth. But truth is not foremost on the agenda of the groups now shouting for gun control, nor is it on President Obama's agenda. And all of this is being fed by an almost messianic frenzy of media demands for gun control. The United States will probably adopt a federal ban on assault guns, including automatic and semi-automatic arms. The ban will certainly be challenged and the US Supreme Court will be required to review its 2005 decision that the Second Amendment right of US citizens to bear arms does not relate only to their use by militia but also to individuals. We can not know what the Court will decide. But we can know that the Second Amendment will not stand in the way of those who oppose the right to bear arms. The National Rifle Association will be demonized. Those who oppose tampering with the Second Amendment will be told that they are in reality in favor of mass murder. Last night, CNN's Piers Morgan actually told a guest supporting the right to bear arms that he had no right to express such an opinion. AND, dear readers, all the while the societal problems that are most likely to be causing this particular type of violence in America will continue to be ignored -- lack of medical insurance coverage for psychological and psychiatric treatment or medicines, and lack of laws that permit parents or public officials to demand psychological and psychiatric care until a troubled person has actually caused harm to himself or others (this means that mass murderers can be forced to undergo treatment after, but not before, they have murdered innocent people). Finally, elected federal officeholders, from the President down, need to make clear in the legislative history and in the actual sections of the ban itself that the limited gun ban law passed has nothing to do with the otherwise valid Second Amendment right to bear arms, which is inviolate and will be honored.