No more Newtowns

“Our hearts are broken today.”

Addressing a shocked and grief-stricken nation on Friday, President Obama summed up the collective emotions of Americans following the horrific tragedy that unfolded in a Newtown, Conn., elementary school.

By now, we’ve had two days to process the news of 26 dead — including 20 children between the ages of 6 and 7. But no amount of time can distill sense of this senselessness.

As a nation, we’ve witnessed far too many of these tragedies and the heartache of their aftermath. We grieve together, and we are outraged together. We wonder together how school shootings in Newtown, in Owensboro, Ky., in Littleton, Colo., in Bethel, Alaska, can happen.

“Can we not,” we ask together, “expect to be safe in our public schools, in our shopping malls and in our movie theaters?” Yet meaningful effort to work together for the safety of all remains elusive.

News accounts of the Newtown incident highlight how police training for such circumstances has evolved since the 1999 Columbine shootings, where police essentially stood by while victims died. Today, the mindset is “not one more victim,” and police are trained to confront the shooter(s) right away.

While there is a measure of comfort that can be taken in better-trained law enforcement personnel, it is illustrative that our national dialogue on the complex causes of such mass murders has not similarly evolved. We get wrapped around the proverbial axle about the alleged influence of rock music, video games, movies, mental health, bad parenting … the list goes on. But conspicuous by their absence from that list are firearms.

This is simply not reasonable. Nor is it a sustainable dynamic, if we are to take personal safety seriously. It is akin to discussing solutions to drunken driving without bringing alcohol into the conversation.

To be very clear, this is not a plea to dismantle the Second Amendment. We remain staunch supporters of this foundation of our Constitution and the rights it confers about gun ownership.

And this is definitely not a plea to disarm responsible citizens. No one should be denied the right to keep weapons for personal safety and recreational use.

This is a plea for reason. It is a plea to heed the wisdom of the U.S. Supreme Court, which recently observed that the Second Amendment is not a free-for-all.

Through Justice Antonin Scalia, one of the court’s most conservative members, the Court expressed its position that “like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited.”

We agree. After all, reasonable people would never argue that ownership of nuclear weapons should be allowed.

An undeniable common denominator in mass shootings has been high-capacity, military-grade automatic weapons. These are not the firearms of choice for a weekend moose hunt. Their sole purpose is to kill a lot of people quickly.

The assault rifle used by the Newtown shooter was the same kind used in last week’s Portland-area mall shootings and by the “D.C. sniper” 10 years ago.

It is no stretch to imagine that the people of Newtown and Portland have a different perspective today about what it means to allow individuals to own such weapons of mass destruction. It is incumbent on all Americans to reconsider where we are willing to draw our own line in the Second Amendment sand.

What should qualify as a weapon of mass destruction? And what, really, does it mean to be “pro-life?”

These questions are critical to the dialogue we must have as a nation to properly honor Friday’s dead and to take the necessary steps toward ensuring there are no more Newtowns.

2/3 The amount by which use of the weapons in crimes dropped during the first nine years of the 1994-2004 federal ban on assault weapons.

7 The percentage decrease in total gun murders in the country during the ban.

450 The number of violent crimes committed involving assault weapons since the 2004 expiration of the ban.

57 The percent of Americans polled in August who favor a ban on the manufacture, sale and possession of semi-automatic assault weapons.

60 The percent of Americans polled in August who favor a ban on the sale and possession of high-capacity or extended ammunition clips.

Sources: Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; Department of Justice; Brady Campaign; CNN.com