Up in arms: News&Guide editorial highlights leftists’ lament

JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. —  It sounds like the Jackson Hole News&Guide is coming for your guns. At the very least they are advocating for repealing the Second Amendment or modifying the rights of U.S. citizens.

Their latest editorial—penned collectively by Johanna Love, Rebecca Huntington, and Adam Meyer—makes clear the paper’s liberal stance on at least one issue of the day.

Blame the firearm.

Never mind just about any high school fab class can 3D print a gun or cook up a bomb using easily-obtainable materials (blueprints and how-to’s exist all over YouTube), let’s ban certain weapons that appear scary, and make more red tape bureaucratic road blocks for the legal purchase of a firearm. That oughtta fix everything.

Are there any ready answers?

Certainly, there is no easy answer to the spate of mass killings. But rather than begin with Band-Aids like banning guns and fortifying schools, why don’t we address the root problems first? What causes someone to want to mow down teachers and students alike on some videogame-like rampage?

Could it be violent videogames themselves, that glorify bloodshed while desensitizing users? Why do these games even exist? Remember when their sales were curtailed after 9/11? Remember when even violent movies were pulled by major motion picture companies after the Twin Towers fell? Hate, violence, bloodshed sickened us then. Not anymore.

And what about a lax justice system that puts violent criminals back out into society in record time? What if judges started actually enforcing laws and doling out maximum sentences?

It is embarrassing and unthinkable, for instance, to see headlines reading the Buffalo shooting suspect will now face ‘domestic terrorism’ charges. As if the additional label of ‘domestic terrorism’ suddenly makes mass murder any worse. How about charging him and sentencing him for the killing of 10 human beings? Shouldn’t that, in itself, constitute a ‘hate crime’ weighty enough to lock someone up for the rest of their existence?

There are already laws against using a firearm to kill people. Just as there are already laws against using a rock to bash someone’s brains in. Adding even more laws to restrict firearm or rock ownership just bloats law books. How about enforcing the ones we have now?

It is always illegal to enter school grounds with a firearm. Salvador Ramos didn’t care about that anymore than he cared about murder being against the law. It’s doubtful he or anyone who has ever shot up a school would worry about whether they obtained their firearm legally.

It’s societal ills not the Sig Sauer

The answers lie somewhere in finding out what triggers the individual, not the trigger of a gun. There are many lethal ways for one to act out in their hate and their brokenness. Removing one means of some sicko seeking revenge on society is incredibly short-sighted.

It’s the medieval equivalent of bleeding patients because we don’t know any better. What is making them sick to begin with, and how do we address that?

Right now the only thing mass shootings appear to trigger is kneejerk reactions and quick-fix proposals that merely further undermine our Constitution and our nation.

“…[W]e appreciate and respect the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment, protecting our right to keep and bear arms,” NaG editors began in their editorial Wednesday, and then finished by advocating for that amendment to be changed, urging their readers to give Sens. John Barrasso and Cynthia Lummis an earful—spelling Barrasso’s name wrong in the process.