USA –-(Ammoland.com)- Since last week’s horrific school mass shooting in Parkland, Florida, the call has once again gone out from all the usual suspects to do something about guns in America.
Never one to miss and opportunity to make a futile gesture for the folks back home, California’s senior senator Diane Feinstein wasted no time, making it known that she wants to do something by prohibiting anyone under 21 years old from buying a rifle.
“Licensed gun dealers cannot sell a handgun to anyone under 21, but they are allowed to sell assault rifles like the AR-15 to anyone over 18. This policy is dangerous and makes absolutely no sense,” Feinstein said in a statement.
“If you can’t buy a handgun or a bottle of beer, you shouldn’t be able to buy an AR-15,” she continued. “This is common sense, and I hope my Republican colleagues will join me in this effort.”
Ross Douthat, one of the New York Times’ leading lights, would do something about school shootings by creating a sliding schedule for when Americans can purchase certain firearms.
After all, the fullness of adult citizenship is not bestowed at once: Driving precedes voting precedes drinking, and the right to stand for certain offices is granted only in your thirties.
Perhaps the self-arming of citizens could be similarly staggered. Let 18-year-olds own hunting rifles. Make revolvers available at 21. Semiautomatic pistols, at 25. And semi-automatic rifles like the AR-15 could be sold to 30-year-olds but no one younger.
NBC’s Sunday talking head, Chuck Todd, sees a more fundamental obstacle to doing something about civilian firearm ownership: the Constitution itself.
But isn’t the difficulty here legislatively the constitution, which is Brett (Stephens’) point in The New York Times, which is he’s calling for the repeal of the Second Amendment. And he says, “The United States has by far more guns in more hands than any other country in the developed world. It has, by far, the highest incidence of firearm-related homicides and suicides. Correlation is not causation. But since Americans aren’t dramatically crazier than other nationalities, what other explanation is there?” However, it is in our constitution.
The obvious conclusion from Todd’s argument supported by Stephens’ op-ed: the Second Amendment has to go.
But since none of those proposals has an ice cube’s chance in Hell of happening any time soon, it falls to individuals to do something about all the scary black guns in the US. Which is why San Antonio’s Mu Sool Won Martial Arts is stepping up.
In a Facebook post shared on Thursday, the San Antonio gym said: “Anybody voluntarily surrendering an assault type weapon to San Antonio Police Department will get a full year of training at Mu Sool Won Martial Arts. A value (of) $1300.00.”
Mu Sool Won’s owner, Len Trevino, sees the offer as a way to get people to re-channel their emotions.
“My primary goal is to work with people that want to learn how to manage their anger and fear differently,” he said. “My personal opinion is that young men don’t know how to manage fear and anger in a healthy way, so they reach for violent outlets: guns, abusing women.”
As a news report indicates, the response to the offer was, well, “mixed.” Which may have something to do with why the offer no longer appears on the gym’s Facebook page.
We tried to ask Mr. Trevino if he thought that the use of an “assault weapon” by Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School’s absent school resource officer or a few of the school’s teachers might have saved some lives last week. Our call hasn’t been returned.
About Dan Zimmerman :
Dan Zimmerman has been shooting all kinds of guns for 25 years and writing about them for the last eight. He’s particularly into the shotgun sports, including trap, sporting clays, duck, and pheasant hunting.