EDITOR:
Actually, there were more than 850 good guys in law enforcement to protect against two kids with guns at the Super Bowl parade and rally in Kansas City last week. How did that work out, Missouri? Was the problem two kids? Or two kids with guns?
Missouri has the seventh highest gun death rate and some of the weakest gun laws in the country. For example, in Missouri there is no permit required to carry a gun in public and there is no minimum age to possess assault weapons. (www.everytown.org) It would seem, then, these two kids carrying guns to the rally attended by a million people were not breaking the law.
The Gun Violence Archive (GVA) reports as of Feb. 15, there were already 49 mass shootings in the first 45 days of 2024. (GVA defines a mass shooting as an incident in which at least four people were killed or injured, not counting the shooter.)
If we could get the emotion out of the gun control issue and address common-sense solutions to the violence in this country, there are practical measures that don’t threaten interpretations of the Second Amendment:
1) Register all gun purchases with serial numbers assigned to owners who would be required to have liability insurance on the gun’s use. Just like a car. (Perhaps the NRA would like to get into this insurance business.)
2) Ban bump stock and automatic weapons manufacture, import, ownership.
3) Manufacture guns equipped with owner recognition so the gun would not fire without recognizing the owner’s thumbprint or other unique identifier. (The technology already exists.) Local law enforcement could change this recognition to the new owner when the gun is re-registered. With this protection, kids couldn’t take a parent’s gun to school and shoot up his or her classmates because the gun wouldn’t fire. Gun thefts would be impractical since the gun wouldn’t be useful to an unlawful owner.
4) Gun buy-backs to get a lot of unregistered guns off the streets and reduce the current number of unsecured guns that could be passed from person to person.
5) Gunlocks, gun safes and hiding guns don’t work. First of all, we know kids can find anything (ask Santa) and secondly, parents always think their kid won’t pick up a gun.
Just as critical is addressing the needs of those who lash out in violence. Get the bullying out of schools. Isolation and ostracizing kids reduce them to being kids on the margins who have no social skills or esteem left to meet their needs for recognition and worth. Many kids are not getting this at home. What they get at home is a gun. The schools in Parkland and Uvalde were torn down and rebuilt because no one wanted to go back inside where the floors were awash in the blood of children.
Meanwhile, your community wants to know: is the hidden gun missing from your closet?
–LeAnn Karbaumer
Platte City
