Editorial: The Truth About Guns

Falls Church City Councilman David Snyder's own demonstration trumped the pro-gun demonstrators at Monday's Falls Church City Council meeting. Moved to speak strongly in the face of a room packed with mostly gun-toting protesters, Snyder read a prepared statement laced with graphic descriptions of his own experiences as a volunteer rescue worker dealing with victims of gun and other wounds. Stating his support for City Manager Dan McKeever's new City policy of notifying police when someone spotted carrying a gun, Snyder concluded his impassioned statement by rising out of his chair behind the dais, standing upright and declaring, "Here I stand and can do no other." Snyder's description of what a .45 bullet does to a human head when shot from close range, as he witnessed it following a bar brawl, was exactly the kind of thing that needed to be said in the face of the rhetorical and legalistic assertions of the pro-gun proponents.

Some things just make you wonder. When average citizens are put through extraordinary paces just to get through an airport and can be detained for carrying nail clippers, and when the public can't even drive on some public streets in Washington, D.C., out of fear for possible national security consequences, others feel they have the right to be hopping mad at the mere notion that police in Falls Church should inquire whether or not a person is carrying a firearm legally. These protesters justify their outrage on grounds they are "law abiding citizens," of course. But you won't find them protesting when they're padded down and their luggage searched at an airport.

Not only should Monday's pro-gun demonstration in Falls Church should be put into the context of homeland security, but in the context of Congress' refusal to extend the ban on assault weapons earlier this month, as well. The point in that case is that not all laws, not all legislative actions or lack thereof, are rational, good or to the betterment of public safety. Therefore, it is not sufficient to simply condone something because it is technically "law." It is not sufficient either from a personal moral standpoint, or from the standpoint of good public administration, as well.

When there is a bad law, a responsible public official will seek ways to protect the public from its real or potential negative consequences.

There is simply no valid justification for making the proliferation of assault weapons on America's streets legal. None. Similarly, other laws that increase the likelihood of lethal violence among innocent civilians and with no merits beyond shallow ideological claims are equally bad, flat out. Carrying guns into public buildings endangers, not protects, the public, whether done legally or not. Dan McKeever is to be applauded for not sitting back, but for devising reasonable, responsible and legal means to mitigate against the work-case scenarios that the General Assembly brought closer to reality this spring.