On Wednesday, Senators Joe Manchin III, D-W.Va., and Patrick J. Toomey, R-Pa., announced an agreement has been reached among Democrats and Republicans in the Senate on a bill that expands backgrounds checks for gun buyers.
The bipartisan compromise will result in a debate reaching the Senate floor, the first time to happen on a gun bill in that chamber in two decades. The Senate voted 68-31 on Thursday to allow the debate to proceed. It will permit amendments to the agreements already reached, which include an expansion of background checks for all gun buyers, higher penalties for criminal sales and a renewal of the assault weapons ban.
While the assault weapons portion of the bill has slim to no chance of being passed, it now seems the most feasible area of gun control legislation - background checks - is now back within the realm of possibility after seeming elusive in recent weeks.
The first thing to be happy with is that Democrats and Republicans finally seem to be working together on an issue dear to the hearts of many Americans. With Congress at a 10 percent approval rating, according to Gallup, it should be more thanreasonable to expect members on both sides of the aisle to feel it necessary to seek compromise and action on major issues - especially when the majority of the American public supports it. A recent poll released on Thursday revealed that 92 percent of Americans support background checks for all gun buyers, according to CBS News and The New York Times.
We support gun control laws. We support stricter regulations that make it more difficult for a gun to get in the hands of someone who means to do harm. Many of us have experienced gun violence firsthand and fully understand the danger and severity of the issue.
In order to ensure that these background checks are carried out throughout the country, a federal program is the most effective way to manage the gun buying process, rather than letting individual states formulate their own regulations. There needs to be national government oversight.
Many of the bill's detractors claim that stricter gun laws - such as the kinds included in this agreement - are an infringement of their constitutional rights.
We respectfully disagree and do believe that it is important for those of us who are pro-gun control to embrace the notion that the Second Amendment provides Americans the individual right to own a gun. While the amendment was originally meant to provide states the right to form their own militias Congress could not destroy, its meaning now ismuch broader than that.
Many liberal-minded people claim that the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and 14th Amendments, etc., should always be read expansively, yet the second should be read very narrowly.
As we support the right to own a gun, however, we do not believe regulations and restrictions violate that right. If you want to be textual about it, the scope of "the right to keep and bear arms" in the Constitution would be very wide. To say the legislature cannot determine any limitations would mean machine guns, torpedoes, missile launchers, etc., could be well within the right of any and all Americans to own.
Restrictions are necessary.
What the bipartisan group is proposing is a good step toward commonsense regulations that are necessary given the violent climate of the culture demonstrated in the wake of recent tragedies in Newtown and Aurora. We need legislation designed to help alleviate further incidents.
Some say that in the larger scheme of things, such a bill is irrelevant; those who want to get their hands on a gun will be able to do so, regardless. Well, whether that is the case or not, we do not believe it is right for the government to stand idle and concede that this is a solution-less problem.
An expansion of background checks, which we would like to see include a mental health dimension, can help prevent someone from getting a gun with the intention of murder or even mass murder.
If the federal government can stop just one of these incidents from happening again, it should do everything it can.
As the scripture says: "Whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world."
This recent Senate maneuver has rescued the gun control debate. Now it is time for Congress to start the process of rescuing lives.
Email: editorial@ubspectrum.com
