Violence Is Not A Constitutional Issue Anymore

I don’t want to register anyone’s gun.

When my son turns 12, we’re going to the rifle range and learn to shoot responsibly and with good aim.

But events in Moses Lake and downtown Spokane in the past few days suggest why people who support the right to keep and bear arms need to begin waging the war against violence and quit focusing so intently on the right to have a gun.

One more impassioned speech about what the Constitution allows doesn’t move our society one inch closer to finding a way to allow both gun ownership and reduce the havoc guns can let loose.

The real struggle, the heroic struggle, is to find a way to keep a 14-year-old boy from walking into his junior high school and killing his teacher and his tormenter.

This wasn’t a drug death in a big-city ghetto.

This kid got good grades.

He didn’t use a Saturday Night Special. He used a .30-.30.

The question isn’t whether he has a right to a gun.

The question is why a kid had a message in his brain that the way to get even with a rival in school is to shoot him.

Spokane hosted a regional conference on youth violence last week.

A theme spoken time and again was that our society is shaped by too many images that say shooting people for little slights is OK.

“They watch that stuff. They act it out. It’s reality to them,” junior high school counselor Mary Cady explained as she sat and listened to the presentations at the Ridpath Hotel last weekend.

Remember the Ridpath? That’s where a 78-year-old gunman walked in on a Tuesday and shot a waitress and the restaurant’s manager.

Why? A witness said the shooting might have been the result of the gunman feeling insulted when others in the restaurant complained that he smelled.

A boy is tormented in junior high and kills his classmate.

An old man who can’t keep himself clean and kills his waitress.

Do these stories have anything to do with the U.S. Constitution? No.

The issues here have to do with anger, isolation, revenge and hate.

So enough, already, about rights, freedoms and the Constitution. We get it.

Most people don’t rob or steal or commit murder with guns.

But the law-abiding people who passionately believe in a free society’s right to have a gun need to focus every ounce of that passion on ways to reduce the violence that guns enable every day on our streets, business and homes.

Fighting government restrictions on firearms is a bonding experience.

It makes people feel good as they do right by the Constitution.

Fighting the causes of despair isn’t fun.

It’s gut-wrenching and messy. But that’s where the true battle needs to be waged.

1990, guns were used during 80 felony assaults and 84 robberies in Spokane County.

By 1994, guns were involved in 300 felony assaults and 184 robberies in Spokane.

In Switzerland every adult male remains in the military reserves until age 50. Most of these men own guns. Most Swiss households have guns.

In Switzerland last year, fewer than 100 people died from handguns.

In the U.S. more than 35,000 died from guns.

This is the issue.

Remember the bumper stickers that read, “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people?” Well, legislators and the public buy into this.

It is politically difficult and practically impossible to take away guns. Time spent arguing about it is time wasted as we chillingly go about murder our society.

The Swiss have guns and and you don’t hear about someone there walking into a school, or a restaurant, and opening fire.

Gun owners and gun supporters need to work harder to find out why.

In the meantime, wouldn’t it be something if every time a troubled youth used a gun to kill a gun-rights group came forward and donated money for counseling or anger control at the school?

Wouldn’t it be heartening when a old man seeks attention through firearms, to have gun supporters speak up for services to assist those who are lonely, mentally-ill or who otherwise cannot care for themselves?

Gun owners, this society needs your passion, your involvement, your hard work to help us address the real problems associated with guns.

, DataTimes MEMO: Chris Peck is the Editor of The Spokesman-Review. His column appears each Sunday on the Perspective page.