Arkansas needs sensible gun laws, not weaker ones

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Children participate in a March for Our Lives rally on March 24, 2018, in Round Rock, Texas. More than 800 similar events, organized by survivors of the Parkland, Florida, school shooting on Feb. 14, that left 17 dead, called for legislative action to address school safety and gun violence. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

After mass shootings, gun rights advocates often say it’s not the time to discuss gun control. If so, it’s also not the time to discuss weakening such control.

Even so, the Game and Fish/State Police subcommittee of the Arkansas Legislative Council proceeded with its discussion of further diluting state gun law at a Sept. 4 meeting, despite a deadly school shooting in Winder, Georgia, hours earlier. The lawmakers discussed bills that might be introduced at next year’s legislative session and scheduled further discussion for earlier this week.

Under the potential changes, Arkansans could carry guns at some new places, including near schools and school bus stops.

During a public hearing on the proposals Monday, gun-safety activists expressed concerns about 18-year-olds who can buy their firearms from a private sale being allowed to bring their guns to those locations, the Arkansas Advocate reported. Many 18-year-olds are still in high school and free to ride school buses, then head to school. If they can carry a gun to the bus stop, what’s to prevent them boarding the bus with it and then sneaking the gun into school as already happens far too often?

And to those who advocate arming teachers — something already legal in Arkansas if a school board allows it — I ask, what about the stressed-out but armed teacher who fought with his wife that morning and then is confronted with a back-talking eighth-grader? Or what about the teacher who lays her gun down and turns away to help a student or break up a fight? It takes only a few seconds for the wrong person to grab that gun and start shooting. Besides, if teachers and librarians can’t be trusted to choose books for students to read, why would anyone trust them with guns in a classroom?

But going back to the subcommittee, it also has approved a recommendation to study a potential path to restore firearm ownership rights to people who were previously committed involuntarily to a psychiatric hospital.

This measure strikes me as especially odd since gun-rights advocates tend to be big on blaming mental health, not easy access to guns, as the problem behind mass shootings. I am further perplexed by the assumption that someone who was involuntarily committed might conceivably have a better chance of restoring his rights than someone who had the wisdom to commit himself voluntarily. I would be open to discussion in either case, but only discussion that takes into account individual differences and the severity of a person’s illness.

Another proposal would prohibit municipalities and counties from enacting firearms requirements that are more restrictive than state law — an idea that quickly won the heart of columnist and law professor Robert Steinbuch. At Monday’s meeting, Steinbuch declared, ““We need to have some teeth in these laws because the localities thumb our noses and say things like, ‘We’re the independent Republic of Little Rock-istan.’

“But the fact is these soviet republics populating our state are thumbing their noses at the legislature over and over again,” Steinbuch said as he catered to the bruised egos of gun- and bullet-loving lawmakers.

It’s not as if Arkansas faces a gun-control threat. In fact, the state’s gun laws are already ranked the nation’s weakest by the nonprofit Everytown for Gun Safety, which advocates for sensible gun regulations and under which Moms Demand Action operates.

I have nothing against guns or the people who own them as long as the weapons are bought and sold legally — without any gun-show loopholes — and as long as they’re stored securely, used legally and safely.

I am opposed to worshiping guns more than a single person’s life, especially a child’s. But in Arkansas, we have gun-show loopholes, many don’t store their guns securely, and all too many people who say they are pro-life are anything but when it comes to guns.

I do not suggest we track gun-owners’ movements, as some want us to track pregnant women across state lines. Nor do I suggest that we round up everyone’s guns and destroy them the way extremists want to rid library shelves of books, even some contemporary classics.

I do suggest stronger, not weaker, gun regulations. No one needs an assault rifle to hunt deer or high-velocity, bone-shattering ammunition to shoot ducks, for example. In fact, other than war and the worst of police emergencies, I know of no reason a civilian needs an assault rifle except to kill as many innocent people as fast as he can and maybe to boost his own faltering ego.

The legislative subcommittee’s proposed policy changes are the culmination of a year-long study, supposedly to clarify the state’s overlapping and sometimes conflicting firearm laws. But make no mistake: Some changes also are aimed at weakening the laws. The proposals thankfully are still under discussion, and lawmakers plan to present their final recommendations in the coming weeks.

In fairness, not every single proposal is bad. In a laughable act of semi-bravery, for example, one measure suggests lawmakers may want to increase fines originally set in 1893 for firing guns at trains.

And before we forget it, let’s see what the Second Amendment actually says. It states, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

The United States’ militia is well-armed to this day. Americans still have the right to bear arms — weapons that didn’t even exist when the Second Amendment was ratified in 1791. Back then, the typical firearms were muskets and flintlock pistols. The guns weren’t known for their accuracy and could hold only a single round at a time.

So, I think our gun rights are more than safe in America. I can’t say as much for our children’s lives.

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