the need for gun control

It is sad beyond words that even in the wake of the horrible massacre at Virginia Tech University yesterday, only a few Democrats have summoned the political courage to call for reactiviating the struggle for gun control in this country--a sign of how totally we have fallen under the iron control of the gun lobby since the Columbinbe shootings back in 1999. Even though a majority of Americans continue to support sensible limitations on handguns, there is a strong feeling that Al Gore may have lost close states like Florida, Ohio, West Virginia and New Hampshire in 2000 (he would have been elected if he had won even one of them) because he backed gun control and thereby turned off numerous rural voters in those states. Even though gun advocates are fewer, they are far more fervrid in support of their cause.

Even assuming that is true and even assuming a similar political dynamic exists today, how pathetically timid and how irresponsible not to take up a cause that is literally about preserving American lives. It is revealing that the riots in France that went on for weeks in immigrant communities around the country in November 2005; riots which were quite violent and involved hundreds of injuries and arrests, only one person was killed. Why? Because unlike here, the French, like other Europeans, do not have easy access to firearms. Meanwhile, the murder rate in urban communities across America, including nearby places like Philadelphia and Newark continues to rise to new records. Why? Because of the self-same easy access to guns.

There are always going to be alienated and mentally ill individuals like the gunman in Blacksburg, Virginia. That is sadly true in every modern society, in Europe as well as the U.S. A few such people are always going to become angry and/or crazed enough to decide that not only do they want to end their own lives, but desire to lash out at society by taking as many possible innocent victims with them. But only here in the U.S. are such people able arm themselves to the hilt at will and then go out and carry out their sick ambition to slaughter scores of their fellow citizens before shooting themselves. Why the hell do we allow such carnage to continue?

For the President and Congress to refuse to push for gun control laws that would keep weapons out of the hands of maniacs like this one is absolutely to be complicit in the slaughter of innocent Americans. The killer in Virginia pulled the trigger--again and again---but it was our political elite that enabled him to do so. To hear George W. Bush, who ignored the pleas of police departments across the country and allowed some of the few laws preventing the sale of advanced weaponry and ammunition to expire a couple of years ago, now purporting to leading our nation's mourning for the innocent victims of Virginia Tech, is nothing short of nauseating. Bush might have saved these lives, and many others, if he had been willing to advocate the passage of sensible gun laws that would still have allowed law-abiding citizens to own rifles for hunting. He might have done that, but instead he consciously chose the path of political expediency and allowed those essential regulations to expire.

As is well known, Bush and the rest of the rest of the political and religious right-wing in this country, the people that too mnay in the Russian community embrace as political allies, label themselves as 'pro-life.' For them being 'pro-life' means endeavoring to prevent women from deciding themselves whether or not to bring to term fetuses inside their own bodies. Or it means fighting to save stem cell lines that, if instead used by science, might actually bring cures to hereditary diseases. So for these holier than thou, supposedly deeply religious moralists, upholding the sanctity of life means caring deeply for unborn fetuses and stem cell lines. Yet for Bush and company, being 'pro-life' has nothing at all to do with saving the lives of living and breathing Americans; has nothing at all to do with preventing students at Virginia Tech from being cut down in the prime of their lives by senseless gun violence. On that question, the 'pro-life' crowd supports the right of all Americans, including crazies like this one, to arm themselves to the teeth. In other words, the so-called 'pro life' crowd chooses death over life.

Shame on the Democrats, most of whom know better, for being too afraid of their own shadows to take up anew a cause that needs to be at the heart of any real 'pro-life' agenda--the cause of gun control. America's religious communities, including the Jewish community, needs to scream loud and clear for our political class to wake up, show some guts and pass some new gun control laws that can help prevent horrors like the Virginia Tech massacre from happening across America, again and again.