We can Stop the Next Sandy Hook and Preserve The Right to Bear Arms:

Snowflakes for Sandy Hook (Photo credit: Nica Wolf)

The atrocity at Sandy Hook Elementary School has sparked a new round of discussion about gun control.  That discussion has ranged from talk of gun confiscation on the one hand to a serious conversation about arming school personnel on the other. As it is with everything about our political discourse now, the conversation is full of extremes.  So you get the NRA telling everyone that any attempt to regulate the type of firepower available to average citizens is a blatant attempt to destroy our rights, while activists on the left are pushing for every regulatory measure from the reasonable to the ridiculous. The Newtown funerals are only recently over.

The thing is, preventing the next Sandy Hook doesn't have to be a zero sum game of our rights vs. our children.  It's a fact that illegally acquired weapons have played a role in several of the 60 odd mass shootings since 1982.  Determining whether that's a failure of enforcement of the current gun laws or evidence of the need for additional regulation is a question that we likely already have the answer to.

Third Way has a series of recommendations for gun regulation.  None of them merit dismissal as left wing attempts to destroy our 2nd amendment rights. Several seem useful, some a bit lightweight. But listen to conservative voices like the American Conservative, and you get ridiculous arguments that essentially posit that we ought to deregulate gun ownership completely. The same people would not advocate similar deregulation of car ownership, but blithely push that viewpoint for weapons specifically made for mowing down humans.

There is a reasonable approach to gun regulation and protecting our 2nd amendment rights.  Arguing that there is no reasonable approach to it is whats unreasonable.

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