Ancient Greek legend tells us that over 3,000 years ago, a Mycenean king named Agamemnon desperately needed fair winds for a voyage to Troy so he could sail his army there to launch a war. To get the winds, he sacrificed his own eldest daughter.
Can you imagine anything more barbarous?
I can.
On May 24, at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, 19 children were killed along with two of their teachers. All 21 were shot dead by a young man who — just after turning 18 — had legally purchased two semi-automatic rifles at a local gun store, along with 375 rounds of ammunition, and posted a photo of them on Instagram. All perfectly legal in Texas.
With 19 children shot dead on May 24 alone, the total number of American children killed by guns this year is 140 — just about one for every single day of 2022 so far. According to the Gun Violence Archive (https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/), they are victims of just one of the 213 mass shootings that have occurred this year, and part of a truly barbarous statistic. So far this year, the total number of people killed by guns in this country is 17,199. And we’re not even five months into 2022.
Every time a mass shooting occurs, advocates of gun rights such as Kelly Ann Conway accuse Democrats of exploiting it for political gain and tell us that now is the time to mourn the dead, not press for gun control. But can we honestly mourn the dead without at least trying to change a system that sacrifices so many lives?
Can we honestly claim that the laxity of our gun laws has no bearing on gun deaths, that the appalling number of guns in this country — and the ease with which they can be acquired — has nothing to do with the number of people killed by guns each year here? In Canada, where the gun ownership rate is 34.7 per 100 residents, the number of gun deaths this year is just over two (that’s two!) per 100,000. In the U.S., where the gun ownership rate is 120.5 per 100 (some people own several guns), the number of gun deaths this year is 12.21 per 100,000 — six times Canada’s (see https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-41488081 and https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/gun-deaths-by-country).
In the face of these killings, in the face of sacrifices that make Agamemnon’s killing of his daughter seem no more than a mild case of parental overreach, gun rights advocates such as the National Rifle Association repeatedly cite the sanctity of the Second Amendment. Deep in their hearts, I suspect, they believe that nothing — not even the lives of children — is more sacred than the unfettered right to bear arms. According to them, the Second Amendment says simply that “the right to bear arms shall not be infringed.” But the very first phrase of the Second Amendment is “well-regulated,” and it refers to militias — not individuals. The Second Amendment has never given anyone in this country the absolute, unregulated right to own, carry or use any gun they want to buy.
So where do we go from here? Can we do anything more than wring our hands at the impossibility of regulating the 400 million guns now owned by our population of 332.5 million — more than one gun for every man, woman and child?
I believe we can.
For a start, every candidate for any legislative office in this land should be made to say which is more important: reducing gun deaths or keeping guns unregulated. No candidate should be allowed to dodge this question.
All candidates who prioritize reducing gun deaths should then be made to say exactly how they would regulate the sale and use of guns, specifically what steps they would take to reduce or eliminate the likelihood that legally purchased guns of any kind could ever be used again to kill school children.
I am NOT urging repeal of the Second Amendment. I am simply urging us to heed the plain meaning of its very first phrase: “well-regulated.” Now more than ever, we are bound in conscience to choose between life and death. We must either sacrifice absolute gun rights to some form of gun regulation, or go on sacrificing children — hundreds of children every year — on the altar of absolute gun rights.
James A. W. Heffernan is a professor of English emeritus at Dartmouth College.