After moment of silence for Sandy Hook, speak out to silence guns
Yael T. AbouhalkahThis morning’s moment of silence for the 26 Sandy Hook Elementary School victims was a symbolic reminder of how many lives a gunman snuffed out last Friday.
But for real change in America, it’s time to silence the guns.
We need to act. We need to silence the people who think they have a right to buy any gun they want.
Silence the gun nuts who think they have the right to buy any kind of ammunition they want, any quantity they want.
Silence all this talk about how the Second Amendment trumps the right of Americans to live in a country with sane gun laws, not insanely liberal ones.
Don’t let the children of Sandy Hook die in vain.
That will not happen if, after the moment of silence, gun control advocates work for real change in this country.
Yes, it starts in Washington, where new laws will be needed to ban all - and I do mean all - sales of assault weapons. Ban all sales of high-capacity magazines. Ban all future gun shows. Require far more stringent background checks.
Here’s what good control does not look like: getting caught up in the rabbit hole trap of first working to improve mental health treatment in this country. That’s what the gun-control cowards like Missouri’s U.S. Sen Roy Blunt and Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback are talking about today - trying to divert America’s attention from the real problem.
And that problem is the easy availability of guns.
The moment of silence Friday was important for a country in its healing process over the deaths of so many innocent victims.
But the really effective way to reduce such moments of silence in the future is to silence the guns and their supporters who want to continue flooding America’s homes with lethal weapons.
Thomas Bates
5 months agoIn November 1938, one of the first things Hitler did at the start of the Holocaust was to ban all guns and weapons for Jews. Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Mussolini, and many other mass-murdering dictators have also used gun control to render their victims defenseless. Gun control is not about guns, it’s about control.
Aaron Lee Beckstead
5 months agoYael you are so misguided. I do not even care about the second amendment, but do you really think that banning these things will change anything? Crazy and criminal people do not care about your so called bans. How is the ban on drugs going…people will get what they want, and what you are going to crowd our jails more with gun offenders….???
John Martins
5 months agoIf you don’t think a ban on guns work, you’re obviously unable to look at any country other than your own. Millions upon millions of people live in countries where firearms are illegal and homicides/accidents involving firearms are practically non-existent. If your country is unable to do the same, it’s because your society is too screwed up to let your own government do the right thing and will insist in sneaking weapons back in so that you can murder each other once more.
Kevin Decker
5 months agoKC Star - Are you listening to your subscribers - the ones who pay your paycheck - the ones who keep your lousy paper in business?? It is time for Yael T. Abouhalkah to go. What a pitiful editorialist. Certainly the Star can do better. I have been reading his “comments” for years. I have come to the conclusion he has no “critical thinking” skills, he is only pursuing his agenda.