Dole Should Rail Against Plague Of Guns

However cynical his motives, Kansas Sen. Bob Dole has clambered aboard a legitimate issue.

In a speech delivered last week in Los Angeles, the Senate majority leader said, “Our music, movies, television and advertising regularly push the limits of decency, bombarding our children with destructive messages of casual violence and even more casual sex.”

This can be confirmed by turning on any television set.

“A line has been crossed,” the Republican presidential candidate said, “not just of taste, but of human dignity and decency. It is crossed every time sexual violence is given a catchy tune, when teen suicide is set to an appealing beat, when Hollywood’s dream factories turn out nightmares of depravity.”

Good issue. Good speech.

It pleased the fat cats who had ponied up close to half a million dollars to attend the presidential fund-raiser at the Century City Marriott.

It pleased the right-wingers of the Republican Party, to whom Dole temporarily is enslaved.

And it addressed the very serious concerns of a lot of Americans - especially parents - over what Dole described as the “mainstreaming of deviancy” and the “smothering” of “our instinct for outrage.”

According to Dole, “We have reached the point where our popular culture threatens to undermine our character as a nation.”

OK. That was the easy part. Bludgeon the entertainment moguls who promote filthy lyrics and mass mayhem for profit.

But Dole also said, “I believe our country is crying out for leaders who will call us as a people to our better nature, … who will bring back our confidence in the good - not play on our fears of life’s dark corners.”

That’s where Dole lost me. Does he believe that he and his pals at the National Rifle Association are “calling us as a people to our better nature”?

Dole cannot do enough for the NRA, including using his considerable power to try to lift the federal ban on assault weapons. How does a sane man manage to say with one breath that he is concerned about the safety of children and then, with the next breath, say that we need to flood our society with ever more, and ever more powerful, guns?

I call to the senator’s attention a report called “The Unspoken Tragedy: Firearm Suicide in the United States.” It was prepared by the Educational Fund to End Handgun Violence and the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. Released the day before Dole’s speech, it shows that firearm suicides, especially among children, are increasing dramatically.

“While the nation’s overall suicide rate appears to have reached a plateau,” the report says, “youth suicide rates continue to climb, marking a distinct and alarming shift in suicides to the youngest age groups.”

The report continues: “The self-destructive use of guns is the most common method of suicide for young people in the United States. Guns are largely, if not entirely, responsible for the dramatic increase in suicide rates for the nation’s youths.”

Each year, more than 17,000 Americans die from self-inflicted firearm injuries. In 1991, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “more teenagers and young adults died from suicide than died from cancer, heart disease, HIV infection or AIDS, birth defects, pneumonia and influenza, stroke and chronic lung disease combined.”

The CDC has reported that more than 60 percent of all suicides are committed with firearms. Its statistics show that people living in a household where a firearm is kept are nearly five times more likely to die by suicide than people who live in gunfree homes.

Combine firearm suicides with firearm homicides and it should be clear to everyone that the plague of guns in our society is killing an awful lot of children.

Dole gave his speech and moved on. He had to have been pleased by the reaction. He is right - our culture is being debased.

But if he wants to do something concrete about the well-being of children, he will renounce his support for the NRA and its fanatical efforts to put guns into the hands of as many Americans as possible.

He will reverse his pledge to lift the ban on assault weapons. He will allow himself to recognize that a loaded gun is far more of a threat to a child than a filthy lyric.

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