Donald Kaul

Donald Kaul has come out of retirement to offer his unique voice on how we as a nation should think about and respond to the atrocity in Newtown, Connecticut and our country’s problem with gun violence.  Here is an excerpt from his article.   He’s the first to be appropriately mad-as-hell-and-not-going-to-take-it-anymore.

A misanthropic young man who never seemed particularly violent killed his mother and then broke into an elementary school and massacred little kids, teachers, and the principal.

The thing missing from the debate so far is anger — anger that we live in a society where something like the Sandy Hook Elementary massacre can happen and our main concern is not offending the NRA’s sensibilities.

That’s obscene. Here, then, is my “madder-than-Hell-and-I’m-not-going-to-take-it-anymore” program for ending gun violence in America:

Repeal the Second Amendment, the part about guns anyway. It’s badly written, confusing and more trouble than it’s worth. It offers an absolute right to gun ownership, but it puts it in the context of the need for a “well regulated militia.” We don’t make our militia bring their own guns to battles. And surely the Founders couldn’t have envisioned weapons like those used in the Newtown shooting when they guaranteed gun rights. Owning a gun should be a privilege, not a right.

Declare the NRA a terrorist organization and make membership illegal. Hey! We did it to the Communist Party and the NRA has led to the deaths of more of us than American Commies ever did. (I would also raze the organization’s headquarters, clear the rubble, and salt the earth, but that’s optional.) Make ownership of unlicensed assault rifles a felony. If some people refused to give up their guns, that “prying the guns from their cold, dead hands” thing works for me.

Then I would tie Mitch McConnell and John Boehner, our esteemed Republican leaders, to the back of a Chevy pickup and drag them around a parking lot until they saw the light on gun control.

And if that didn’t work, I’d adopt radical measures. None of that is going to happen, of course. But I’ll bet gun sales will rise.

OtherWords columnist Donald Kaul lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan. This is his first column since late July, the month he had a heart attack and decided to take a break. Click here to read the entire article at OtherWords.org