Some thoughts on Orlando
(Written by Micah Lasher, son of a high school classmate of mine. Micah is former Chief of Staff to Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, is running for New York for state Senate in the Sept. 13 Democratic primary to succeed Sen. Adriano Espaillat in his Manhattan district.
Espaillat is running in the June 29 Democratic congressional primary to replace retiring veteran Rep. Charles Rangel.)
'I have long been uncomfortable with politicians expounding on the subject of tragedy, public or personal. And so it is with no small amount of reticence, after reflection over the last week, that I write to share some thoughts in the wake of the mass shooting in Orlando, Florida.
As it happens, I flew to Orlando on the morning of Friday, May 13. My sister and I then drove an hour for a funeral. Our 21-year-old cousin, Hastings Kofkin, had taken his life two days earlier. . .
It is inarguable that the loss of life in Orlando last week would have been much less significant had the killer not had access to a gun. The same may be said of the tragedies in Charleston, Newtown, San Bernadino, Aurora, at Virginia Tech, and in too many towns whose names we shouldn’t know. Most of those lost in these tragedies, most of those shot every day in the streets of our cities, and many of the 20,000 Americans lost to suicide by gun each year need not be dead. A handful of gun manufacturers and the powerful lobby that they fund, together with their water-carriers in politics and on the bench, are killing our people.
I have lost any sense of nuance on this point. Those who do not want to curtail gun ownership in this country are purveyors of death. This is a zero sum game. Our gun death rates are “in a different world” from other advanced countries. This is not because of “radical Islam.” That is a right-wing parry as laughable as it is despicable. People are dying because it can be easier to buy a gun than to get a fishing license. In the same vein, suicide attempts with guns are 85% successful; the rate with pills is less than 3%. Sometimes, people don’t kill people — guns do.
Our national debate on this subject has gone so far off the rails it is hard to fathom. The NRA has us fighting for half a loaf, and not even winning the crumbs. Undoubtedly, we need robust background checks and an assault weapons ban. It is ridiculous that we need even discuss whether individuals on the “no-fly” list should be able to buy a gun. At the state level, we need laws that require safe gun storage and take guns away from abusers and out of domestic violence situations. These are all important measures, they would save lives, and we should fight for them. I am skeptical we can win, at least not now, but we should keep fighting.
But the truth is that these are half-measures. The second amendment doesn’t mean what the pro-death camp says it does; as a practical matter, it should be repealed, or revised as Justice John Paul Stevens has suggested. And then we should stop giving people the tools to kill one another. If it is not politically viable, we should not stop thinking about how to make it so.
It is written in the Talmud: “Whoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world.”>>>
https://medium.com/@micahlasher/some-thoughts-on-orlando-1485abce941b#.4k7bkeww3