Here’s the Sunday open line. Young people seem to be getting organized for a March 24 march on Washington to encourage Congress to do so far what it has refused to do: Consider anything but
The March for Our Lives says it is time to talk,
The Trump effort to blame the FBI for failing to check a complaint about the Florida shooter is a misdirection. He had no criminal record. He’d not been judged mentally incompetent. He was not under a domestic order. He was 18 and he could buy all the guns and high-capacity magazines he wanted.
Which brings up a common-sense gun measure that even some gun lovers have mentioned to me — a gun violence protective order, described here by the foundation set up by Gabby Giffords
Laws enacted in 2014 and 2016 in California and Washington provide loved ones with lifesaving tools that can prevent gun tragedies before they occur. Gun violence protective order laws, also known as gun violence restraining orders and extreme risk protection orders, allow families and household members, as well as law enforcement officers, to petition a court to remove a person’s access to guns if he or she poses an imminent danger to self or others.
We have some protection
Here’s the ugly fact — the NRA and the Arkansas legislature are reluctant to restrict gun use by even demonstrably dangerous people. The gun lobby threw in the scrap heap legislation offered by Rep. Clarke Tucker in 2017 to prohibit firearm possession by someone convicted of misdemeanor domestic battery or stalking. Also trashed was legislation to make it a misdemeanor to negligently allow a child access to a firearm. If Tucker wins the Democratic primary to oppose NRA millionaire Republican Rep. French Hill, you can guess where the gun lobby money will go.
As luck would have it, I just received Congressman Hill’s newsletter. His complete comment on the latest gun slaughter:
I would ask you to keep the community of Parkland, Florida, in your prayers as they reconcile the evil perpetrated against their community. The loss of 17 innocent lives at Stoneman Douglas High School is a heartbreak that no community should have to endure. As a parent of a high school and college student, Martha and I praise the first responders who took action and we remain prayerful at this time.
He couldn’t even bring himself to write the three-letter word that ended those innocent lives.
I remain prayerful somebody — Gwen Combs, Paul Spencer, Clarke Tucker, — will send this gun apologist packing.