The students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School have added a new voice to the debate over the easy availability of guns in our country. Seventeen friends, classmates, and teachers were murdered in cold blood. Sixteen others were wounded. The rest will live with the trauma of shootings for years to come.
Isn’t it enough that school hours must now be wasted on drilling for such attacks? That strapped school districts must ask for additional money to pay for locks, cameras, and other security paraphernalia to protect their campuses? That schools are laying in supplies such as military “trauma bags” containing tourniquets and the like that are used to staunch the flow of blood from firearm wounds? That school administrators and teachers must be prepared to place their own lives on the line to protect their students, and are being told to arm themselves? All because we are unwilling to restrict access to the weapons that in the hands of a deranged gunman can destroy lives.
At some point the rights of everyone else to life and liberty—including the rights of those who choose not to bear arms—deserve at least equal consideration. The kids are right. The easy availability of military-grade weapons to those intent on evil is a problem, if not the problem.
But there are solutions now being discussed that do not impinge on the Second Amendment rights of gun owners, a sore point in any discussion of gun regulation. One such bill, a so-called extreme risk gun law, has already been introduced in the Massachusetts House by Rep. Marjorie Decker of Cambridge.
House bill H3610 would temporarily prevent firearm access to extremely dangerous or suicidal individuals. It’s a power already granted authorities in Massachusetts in cases of domestic abuse when a gun in the wrong hands can be a matter of life and death. Under the bill, a family member, police officer, or health care provider could ask a judge to decide whether to allow firearms to be seized from an owner for up to 10 days while the case is being adjudicated. The order could be removed or extended for up to a year. The bill has been referred to the Joint Committee on Public Safety and Homeland Security, and its report is due April 15. We urge our legislators to bring it to the floor for debate.
The proposed law would give the public one more way to prevent a mass shooting like the one at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. It’s well past time to right the imbalance between the responsibility we place on the teachers and school staff to protect our children and the responsibility of the gun industry and gun owners to keep weapons out of the hands of mass murderers.
