opinion
Fewer Guns = Fewer Deaths
BY BURT SIEGEL
A fter each incident in which
someone takes the lives of
numerous others — typically strangers
— with military-style weapons, our
nation embroils itself once again in the
gun debate. This debate generates
much heat, anger and finger pointing
but rarely any long-term substantial
change. People on the right will claim that
those of us who advocate for greater
restrictions on guns contribute to the
carnage of the young by refusing to
arm classroom teachers. Somehow,
the National Rifle Association has
convinced nearly all Republican
members of Congress that a fourth-
grade teacher will be able to win a
shootout with an enraged teenager
carrying an AR-15 rifle.

The fact that in nearly all of these
violent incidents armed security was
soon present but hasn’t prevented
any of these has had little, if any,
impact. As disturbing as it is, no facts
have changed the minds of those
who seem willing to lose children
rather than lose their so-called gun
rights. Does anyone who reads this
doubt that armed elementary school
teachers will be effective where
trained law enforcement profession-
als have frequently failed?
There are slightly more than 3 million
teachers in approximately 131,000
public, private and charter K-12
schools in the U.S. Even if only half of
the teaching population was armed
that would mean a very lucrative
bonanza for the firearms industry. We
can assume that many administrators
would wish to be armed as well. Not
that these companies would ever
put profits ahead of public safety, of
course. There is an interesting phenom-
enon associated with the three-
year-old pandemic. According to
the collective tax filings of both gun
and ammunition makers, their profits
16 JUNE 16, 2022 | JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
have been the highest in history. No
one is sure why this is so. Perhaps
Smith and Wesson has been work-
ing on a gun that can kill the COVID
virus? Many of us assert that white rac-
ism is a major contributing factor
in the upswing in multiple shoot-
ings. And unquestionably there has
been a marked increase in the pro-
found anger expressed by white
men toward anyone they consider
to be the “other,” including Jews.

Nearly all of the shooters have been
white male adolescents, but the vast
majority of the victims have also
been white. And those responsible
for these deaths have included a
small number of African Americans
and Latinos.

For some reason, the racial iden-
tity of the gunmen in Columbine,
Newtown and recently Buffalo is
often identified in the media but
not so in the recent multiple deaths
on South Street in Philadelphia and
in Chattanooga, Tennessee. While
mass shootings are much more com-
mon within the white population,
racial minorities are more likely to
be shot by members of their own
cohort, although rarely in large-scale
violence. It would seem obvious that
the major contributing factor in these
deaths is not only the hatred of the
other but also the love of guns.

We should be proud of the Jewish
public policy advocacy groups such
as the Anti-Defamation League and
the synagogue movements for their
support of those measures that will
make it harder for individuals to get
guns designed for the sole purpose
of killing others.

Some few critics within the Jewish
community assert that those who
believe that 18-year-olds should not
be able to purchase military-style
weapons and hundreds of rounds of
ammunition are merely “virtue sig-
naling” and posturing. These people
claim that those who advocate for
reducing access to such weapons
are naïve, but all evidence shows
that where it is harder to get such
weapons, fewer people are killed by
them. To argue otherwise is like arguing
that speed limits don’t reduce vehic-
ular deaths and injuries. It will come
as no surprise that a waiting period
and limiting the number of bullets
that can be purchased at once in
some jurisdictions also contributes to
fewer gun deaths.

It is worth keeping in mind that the
language of the Second Amendment
reads as follows: “A well-regulated
Militia, being necessary to the secu-
rity of a free State, the right of the
people to keep and bear Arms, shall
not be infringed.”
The NRA, extreme conservative
jurists and too many gun owners
claim that this amendment guaran-
tees the right of Americans to own
guns. They also insist that this ‘”right”
was not intended to be solely in the
context of a “well-regulated militia.”
We can and will continue to debate
exactly what the authors of this
amendment had in mind over two
hundred years ago. However, mem-
bers of the Supreme Court and lower
federal courts have not been of one
mind in holding that this amendment
provides a right to all and every
individual to own any firearm they
so wish.

In fact, from 1994 until 2004 the
individual possession of what is
commonly referred to as an assault
weapon was banned under federal
law. Unfortunately, the legislation
outlawing such private ownership
expired in 2004. Not surprisingly
mass murders then increased as well.

The Second Amendment was writ-
ten in 1791, a time when fighting
another war with England was cer-
tainly a possibility. And, war was
again fought with Great Britain some
20 years later. It is, therefore, no sur-
prise that the Founding Fathers felt
that it was necessary for our nation to
have the ability to defend itself.

But it is preposterous to believe
that the drafters ever imagined
weapons that could discharge 40
rounds per minute. Nor is it likely
that they envisioned shootouts in
classrooms between a third-grade
teacher and an irate teenage boy.

Gun advocates also seem to forget
that in 1791 conditions in America,
a significantly rural nation, people
depended upon guns to provide
food for their families, provide pro-
tection from unhappy native people
who objected to foreigners taking
their land and to create a relatively
peaceful environment in an often
hostile land.

Opponents of laws designed to
reduce deaths from firearms accuse
us of being naïve and that “bad guys”
will always get guns and use them,
and this is obviously so. But it is also
so that fewer guns will lead to fewer
deaths by guns.

We are taught in the Talmud that
saving even one life is as though the
whole world was saved. I’d like to
suggest that lawmakers who think
that saving even one life is point-
less should look at the faces of
the mothers and fathers who stood
outside their children’s classroom in
Uvalde, Texas, listening to their chil-
dren being shot and tell them that
preventing Salvador Ramos from
buying two semiautomatic weap-
ons would have been pointless. Or
perhaps go to a funeral with parents
whose sons and daughters were
so badly maimed that they needed
DNA matches to prove that a small
cadaver was their child’s.

Until then, all we can do is elect
men and women who understand
that fewer guns, in the hands of fewer
people, will mean fewer deaths. JE
Burt Siegel is the retired executive
director of the Jewish Community
Relations Council. He served on the
Philadelphia Commission on Human
Relations for 18 years, including
serving as vice chair.