The new gun-safety law is good, but it's just a start. Here's what we need to do now
I felt ambivalent about going to the White House celebrate the Safer Communities Act. But I went to honor the parents of slain children, and to press for more action.
Ambivalent. That’s how I felt about going to the White House on Monday to celebrate the bi-partisan Safer Communities Act — the first federal gun-safety law in 30 years. As many said, the new law is a start in the right direction, but wholly inadequate to protect our children and loved ones from mass shootings.
I went because of the parents who had lost their kids, the students who had lost their best friends, and the relatives of the massacred who have worked tirelessly to save other lives. Their integrity brought me to the White House to celebrate a step forward. Gun violence is personal for so many people now; all of us parents worry about it.
The simple and moving ceremony was opened, appropriately, by Dr. Ray Guerrero, a pediatrician from Uvalde who was sent the dead children after the slaughter in his town. Some, Guerrero told us, could only be identified through their parents' DNA, after military-grade weapons ripped through their 4th grade bodies.
Here is how Dr. Guerrero started the event, “Let this only be the start to the banning of assault weapons. Start the change ... where weapons of war are never allowed in our communities.”
That was and should be the call to our nation now.
This is the only morally credible message now: banning military assault weapons in civilian society is absolutely required to protect our children and loved ones. And if we won’t ban these weapons, we really don’t care about protecting our children. It’s time to be honest. To say there is any legitimate reason, like hunting or sport or entertainment, for these military assault weapons is to just be dishonest – and that means to be a liar.
Republican Senators lie all the time about this. Senator John Thune of South Dakota says we can’t ban AR-15s because people use them to hunt prairie dogs. Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana said people need them to hunt feral pigs. You hear that, people? We can’t protect our children because people need ASSAULT RIFLES to hunt rodents and pigs. We would laugh at that absurdity, if the consequences were not so painfully deadly.
Back to the White House event. For all the recent articles about Joe Biden’s aging, most of us listening on the White House lawn thought the President gave a compelling and passionate address on guns. He intelligently described how the Safer Communities Act was the most impactful new law on guns in more than three decades. How sad is that?
Because of Republican obstruction in the Senate, the Safer Communities Act is extremely narrow: it provides funds for states to institute Red Flag laws, enhances background checks for gun buyers under 21, cracks down on “straw purchases” for people who aren’t supposed to be able to buy guns, temporarily closes the “boyfriend loophole” that allowed non-married domestic abusers to purchase firearms and provides funds for school safety and community mental health programs.
“What we are doing here today is real, it’s vivid, it’s relevant,” Biden said. “The action we take today is a step designed to make our nation the kind of nation we should be. It’s about the most fundamental of things — the lives of our children, of our loved ones.”
But there is so much more to do, Biden acknowledged.
“This legislation is real progress, but more has to be done. The provision of this new legislation is going to save lives. And it’s proof that in today’s politics we can come together on a bipartisan basis to get important things done, even on an issue as tough as guns.
“And one more thing: It’s a call to action to all of us to do more.”
As President Biden noted: more than “40,000 people died from gunshot wounds last year in the United States, 25,000 by suicide.
“Can this really be the United States of America?” the president continued. “Why has it come to this? We all know a lot of the reasons: gun lobby, gun manufacturers, special interest money, the rise of hyper-partisan tribal politics in the country where we don’t debate the issues on the merits and we just rather turn on each other from our corners and attack the other side.
“Regardless, we’re living in a country awash in weapons of war.
Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker was at the White House ceremony, where he called for the banning of assault weapons in every state, even if the Congress won’t do it. Good idea. Every blue state, without Republican vetoes, could and should ban military weapons. I met the Mayor of Highland Park, Illinois, Nancy Rotering, who was also at the gathering, after seven of her citizens were slaughtered by a killer with an assault rifle at a July 4th parade, and many more wounded. She was full of fire and not about to wait on Congress to protect her community.
The story from the Highland Park massacre that got to the deepest places in me was the one about 2-year-old Aiden McCarthy, who survived because his parents Kevin and Irina shielded his body with theirs, sacrificing their lives to protect their child. That image stayed with me all weekend, even while watching my son play a baseball game, where another 2-year-old was running around, playing and laughing, in the midst of our families.
I read the story of a father and his teenage son running away, then seeing Aiden’s little body beneath the dead bodies of his parents, and returned to rescue him. The father, interviewed with his son by a reporter, was struck by Aiden’s words, which he heard over and over again as they took the little boy away: “Shots, Shots, Shots, Shot Mommy, Shot Daddy.”
These are words that will stay with a little boy for the rest of his life. You simply cannot protect the children like Aiden unless and until you ban assault weapons. So, lawmakers, if you won’t agree to ban military weapons from civilian society, you should just stop lying about your concern for our children.
At the White House. Biden asked the fundamental question that every American elected leader should now be asked – repeatedly – until they give a credible answer: “What kind of nation shall we be?”
These are “moral choices,” said the president. Raising his voice in anger, he proclaimed: “Thoughts and prayers must be matched with action!”
That was a word that came from someone who has spent much time alongside many people who have suffered the deepest losses of their lives.
And Joe Biden showed the courage to lift up the reality of white supremacy at the heart of gun culture in America today. The often unspoken word is that the military assault weapons are the last resort for white militia’s who are determined to enforce America’s Original Sin of racism by any means necessary.
The White House event meant more to me because I was allowed to bring a guest, and was accompanied by my oldest son Luke. Now a college graduate and working in the field of law, he was struck by the numbers that Biden lifted up: that guns are now the number one killer of children and teenagers; and that those gun deaths of our young people now outnumber the totals for both police and soldiers killed in the line of duty.
We got to talk to Senator Chris Murphy after the ceremony, the one most responsible for passing this bi-partisan law. No one worked harder to make this day happen, but nobody better understands why this start is not nearly enough. Chris Murphy is clearly not done yet and expressed his commitment to take the next and deeper steps which will be required. We thanked him for that, but I reminded him to get some deserved rest first which got a smile and a commitment to do that, too.
Faith was everywhere at the White House on Monday, perhaps because we knew that we would need more of it going forward. I was glad for the chance to introduce Luke to some of my long-term allies, including Black congresswomen who are faithful warriors for peace and justice in their communities, and to courageous Black clergy who have fought gun violence with the necessary commitment to action that the nation needs to be taught.
I was glad to hear an almost-benediction from the President of the United States at the end of the ceremony on Monday. Joe Biden, a devoted Catholic, blessed us in the work going forward, “God Bless all of us with the strength to finish the work yet undone.”
Amen to that.
Thank you for this article. My husband and I grew up in Highland Park in the forties and fifties. For many years we have voted, written countless letters to politicians, and taken part in vigils and demonstrations to try to change the absurd and tragic ubiquity of guns of all kinds in our nation. With each of our approximately weekly mass shootings we have mourned and hoped for change. This time we saw blood flowing in the streets we walked on as children and were even more shocked and grief-stricken than usual. But still we hope to see change in our lifetimes, because with our Lord Jesus at God's right hand, nothing can kill hope.
I am haunted by each mass shooting. Each one is an indictment on our country. May we all have the will to protect ourselves from gun violence.