AMERICA deeply mourns the death of 20 innocent young children (between six and seven years old) and the 7 adults, who were ruthlessly gunned down by one deranged young man in Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut on Friday, December 14.
“I am very mindful that mere words cannot match the depths of your sorrow, nor can they heal your wounded hearts. I can only hope that it helps for you to know, that you’re not alone in your grief. That our world, too, has been torn apart.”
President Obama tearfully said last Sunday, hoping to console the victims’ families and the residents of the small town in Connecticut.
Obama spoke to the nation not just as a President, but also as a father of two children, deeply troubled by the mass shootings that had happened in America just the past few years.
“If there is even one step we can take to save another child, or another parent, or another town, from the grief that has visited Tucson, and Aurora, and Oak Creek, and Newtown, and communities from Columbine to Blacksburg before that — then surely we have an obligation to try,” the President said.
This issue has been debated on for years and years. One of the battle cries of then presidential candidate Obama, during the 2008 Presidential Election, was to push for stricter legislations to control the access to and use of firearms, but political realities has relegated this to the back burner.
With the rise in influence of the Tea Party movement in the political arena, Conservatives Republicans and Libertarians have fought so hard for the right of American citizens to bear arms, pursuant to the Second Amendment rights as stipulated by the Founding Fathers in the US Constitution.
But what has been happening in America in just the past decade, and especially the Newtown Connecticut mass murder, have once again jolted us to our core. Why did this tragedy have to happen? How could we have prevented this?
“We can’t accept events like this as routine. Are we really prepared to say that we’re powerless in the face of such carnage, that the politics are too hard? Are we prepared to say that such violence visited on our children year after year after year is somehow the price of our freedom?” the President said.
“We can’t tolerate this anymore. These tragedies must end. And to end them, we must change. We will be told that the causes of such violence are complex, and that is true. No single law — no set of laws can eliminate evil from the world, or prevent every senseless act of violence in our society.” declared President Obama. “I’ll use whatever power this office holds…in an effort aimed at preventing more tragedies like this.”
Many believe the Newtown Connecticut massacre is the tipping point that will move lawmakers to work with the President in legislating stricter gun control laws. Will advocates of the Second Amendment support any tighter laws that will regulate the use of firearms? Will that time be NOW?
Gun control debate revisited
In the wake of the movie theater shooting in Aurora, Colorado in July, President Barack Obama called for some degree of additional restrictions on guns — acknowledging that not enough had been done to prevent weapons from getting into the hands of criminals.
Obama pledged to work with lawmakers from both parties to move forward on the matter. He and called for stepped-up background checks for people who want to buy guns, and for restrictions to keep mentally unbalanced individuals from buying weapons.
Despite the Second Amendment of the Constitution that protects the rights of Americans to bear arms, Obama said: “I also believe that a lot of gun owners would agree that an AK-47 belongs in the hands of soldiers, not in the hands of criminals — that they belong on the battlefield of war, not on the streets of our cities.”
Conservatives, however, contend that the nation’s laws on gun control would not prevent gun-related tragedies.
They argue that the Second Amendment is the right course to preserve and defend the lives and properties of citizens. They point out that the challenge is not the laws. “The challenge is the people who are distracted from reality and do unthinkable, unimaginable, inexplicable things,” Gov. Romney said in July.
Conservatives believe that no gun control law would have prevented Holmes from executing his well-thought of plan to massacre people in the movie theater last July, nor could it have prevented Adam Lanza from shooting and killing those first graders and teachers in Sandy Hook Elementary School.
Pro-gun advocates even blame the mass killings to gun control laws. They argue that if people are armed with gunns, they could have save themselves from people like Lanza and Holmes.
In the wake of the Newtown shooting, an Oregon State Representative even calls for a new controversial proposal for teachers to be armed. Meantime in Texas, a gun store owner offers discounts to teachers to buy weapons to protect them selves and their students in school.
How do we then balance the protection of our rights and the need to protect the safety of our nation from among ourselves?
Let me quote TIME Magazine’s Joe Kline again on what he wrote about this debate last July: “Yes, Americans’ right to bear arms is protected by the Constitution’s Second Amendment, but no right is absolute. While individual liberties are important, the safety, peace and order of the nation as a community is as important, if not more essential.”
“As the President said, we need to have a conversation about these gun laws and mental health system — and a larger conversation as well about how we stay coherent as a society, how we establish our common bonds and maintain a sense of community in a time when all the technological signals are pointing us toward individualism that could slowly lapse into social anarchy…”
* * *
Gel Santos Relos is the anchor of TFC’s “Balitang America.” Views and opinions expressed by the author in this column are are solely those of the author and not of Asian Journal and ABS-CBN-TFC. For comments, go to www.TheFil-AmPerspective.com, https://www.facebook.com/Gel.Santos.Relos
