Editor,
The majority of American mass shootings of children are performed with semi-automatic assault weapons. The need to be called what they are: War Weapons. Typical responses to such events – pay attention and report more of what you see that is unusual, provide more resources to the police, provide counselors, pay for the funerals of slaughtered children – are completely inadequate.
As a nation, we are allowing the slaughter of our children with war weapons. We are not making children safer. We are not providing resources where they need to go to stop the carnage. If the people who perform these acts had a handgun or a less powerful weapon in their hands there would still be great harm but there would not be mass carnage seen in war zones.
Here is a plan I hold in my heart for American children as an American woman:
- Pay attention and report what is unusual – seeing a war weapon on the streets. What is unusual is first responders and police having to face war weapons.
- Make our American children safer by not selling war assault weapons to civilians. Civilians do not need them.
- Give resources to create background checks at gun shows so no terrorist, or person with serious psychiatric issues, or person with a history of violent crime or a history of the use of a gun in a crime, can ever own a gun.
- More counselors on a sliding fee scale, as well as support groups, to those who need them in order to prevent escalation of emotional issues into violence. Require people with a history of violent crimes or use of a gun in a crime to go to counseling in the community as a condition of release from prison.
More people are killed yearly by mass shootings and domestic violence than terrorism in America.
Carolyn Amrit Knaus