Curbing the Death Toll

Over the summer, a day trader in Atlanta shot his family and coworkers, and white supremacists in Los Angeles and Chicago went on rampages against people on the streets. Last spring, the world's eyes were riveted on Littleton, Colo., as two students methodically shot students and a teacher, turning their suburban high school into a brutal and haunting crime scene. In the past few years, equally unrepentant students turned guns on their peers in Oregon and Alabama. And this is to say nothing of the guns used on lovers and rival gangs, against police and innocent bystanders, in every state of the union every day of the year. It is a barrage of gunfire which we have chillingly learned to ignore.

What is most disturbing is how little has been done to stop the slew of shootings that fill the newspapers and news hours. The recommendations which should immediately be put into law are:

• All guns should be registered in a national database. This way, any gun used in a crime could be traced to a recent owner, and the police--rather than the assailant--would have the upper hand.

• All guns should be equipped with safeties. The most senseless deaths are those of children playing with guns and accidentally killing themselves or their friends. The use of "smart gun" technology, which prevents anyone but the owner from firing a gun, should be mandated as soon as is technically feasible.

• A national buyback program with meaningful cash or tax-credit incentives should be established and adequately funded--in the past year a number of state and city buyback programs ran out of funds and thereby allowed guns to circulate that could have been collected and destroyed.

• All assault weapons should be banned from manufacture and sale throughout the United States. Such a ban is already in effect in a number of states. Furthermore, a buyback program should be created to focus especially on semiautomatic and multiple-cartridge weapons--the sort that are made to kill other human beings.

• Police departments must be banned from reselling their weapons. The words "owned by police" disturbingly increase the desirability of a weapon, and the hate crimes this summer involved weapons previously owned by police.

• "Occasional-seller" unlicensed dealers and gun-show vendors should be regulated in the same way gun-shop owners are: with a waiting period required to allow for background checks, with their books maintained in the same way and inspected by the ATF, and with punishments meted out for those who sell to "straw buyers," those buying for criminals.

It seems preposterous that these common-sense measures have not yet been implemented, especially with the bipartisan lip service paid them in political sound bites. However, apparently the American public has not been angry enough and persistent enough until now to ensure their passage.

Now must be the time to save lives and make America a safer country. Citizens must stand up to the entrenched power of the National Rifle Association and see through its rhetoric. Most importantly, with the presidential primaries just around the corner, the American people should make it clear that a comprehensive plan for gun control must be a part of any serious candidate's campaign.

Another death will be one too many.