Taming the Gun Monster That Is Consuming America : Without tough and comprehensive national restrictions on manufacture and ownership of firearms, the slaughter will continue

Isn’t it obvious that America has strayed terribly far off course, that the gun violence now poisoning our society is nothing less than a threat to our national security and collective sanity?

Isn’t it obvious that America has lost more than its innocence when children can’t go to school without being shot at, when domestic quarrels increasingly end in deadly gunfire, when young thugs roam the streets more heavily armed than the police, when the mentally disturbed can vent their frustrations in a crowded town square or office building with an automatic weapon?

Lately the United States has been debating what to do in Somalia, where more than 30 Americans have been killed. That’s a tragedy. But nothing like the tragedy of the District of Columbia, where last year about 15 times as many people, 443, were murdered, or Los Angeles County, where 1,530 were gunshot homicide victims in 1992.

Where are America’s priorities? As columnist Gerald F. Seib put it recently in the Wall Street Journal, “The carnage in U.S. cities has become so great that political leaders are simply tuning it out, even as they worry mightily about lesser tragedies.”

Isn’t it now obvious that the national culture of guns and violence borders on a kind of addiction? That this addiction is a serious danger to the nation’s health? And that, as with any addiction, a strong prescription and permanent abstinence will be required?

The time has come for a historic about-face. America has far too many guns in circulation; strong measures are needed to restrict them to either special circumstances or a select group of people. The challenge is enormous and the change will be politically and emotionally difficult, but the long journey back from self-destruction must begin now.

WHAT’S URGENTLY NEEDED--COMPREHENSIVE REFORM

Question: Why should anyone other than police officers possess a handgun? Until recently, it was enough to answer that the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution assures private citizens the right to possess guns. Or to say that because so many criminals are now armed--so heavily armed--law-abiding citizens must be allowed to own a gun for self-defense. But those responses are no longer adequate. Indeed, they serve only to raise far more urgent questions: How can we act meaningfully to reduce gun violence? Indeed, can we?

It is our judgment that the Second Amendment offers no real impediment to comprehensive federal gun reform. It’s certainly true that many decent and patriotic Americans believe sincerely and deeply that the Second Amendment affords citizens the absolute right to have a gun. We don’t agree and, as we shall demonstrate in a future editorial, most federal court rulings don’t either. On the contrary, the proposition that the Second Amendment does not guarantee a right to keep and bear arms for private, non-militia purposes may be one of the most firmly established propositions in American constitutional law. The amendment states: “A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” That’s all it says.

It is also our judgment that the only way to end the killing and maiming is to impose a near-total ban on the manufacture, sale and private possession of handguns and assault weapons--in effect to restrict their possession to law enforcement officers. To this end, national policy must work to encourage Americans to turn over their handguns and assault weapons voluntarily to the authorities, as a demonstration of how serious this nation is about dealing with the problem.

A voluntary return program can be designed to work better than most of those already tried, especially if it uses market forces to encourage turning guns in to authorities. In a later editorial we will spell out how this might be accomplished. If such a program proved to be inadequate, Congress might need to write new laws that restrict the number of guns available.

As for rifles and shotguns, they should remain generally but not unconditionally available. Such weapons should be licensed and their owners should have to submit to background checks and undergo training in their safe use. There are of course legitimate sporting and hunting uses for such firearms.

We are not alone in calling for strong action. A growing number of police experts, including Los Angeles Police Chief Willie L. Williams, now support severe restrictions on weapons possession. These men and women, increasingly the targets of gun attacks, are on the front lines in the battle for America’s streets.

Physicians too are on the front lines, practicing what amounts to battlefield medicine in emergency rooms across the nation. They have treated the babies permanently disfigured or crippled after being shot in their homes from passing automobiles. More and more of these doctors are advocating a ban on guns. So too are an increasing number of ordinary Americans. In a recent national poll, 52% favored a federal ban on handgun ownership and 63% supported a ban on the sale of automatic and semiautomatic weapons.

HUGE OBSTACLES--BUT THE EFFORT MUST BEGIN NOW

However, many Americans vigorously and righteously disagree. Some contend that there’s absolutely nothing wrong with gun ownership and indeed that Americans must retain their relatively easy access to guns in order to protect themselves and their families. Many others believe that far less comprehensive measures would sharply reduce the rate of gun violence, measures such as stiffer penalties for gun-involved crimes and better enforcement of existing gun licensing laws. We agree that these measures could help--but only a little. Without tough and nearly comprehensive national restrictions on manufacture, sale and ownership, the slaughter will continue. In a future editorial The Times will explore the major policy alternatives to a ban on handguns and automatic weapons.

It’s true that even a comprehensive approach such as we are urging offers no overnight cure. If there were no National Rifle Assn., with its potent political lobby, there still would be huge obstacles.

For instance, even if all gun manufacturing and sales ceased now, about 200 million guns would remain in circulation--nearly one gun for every man, woman and child in this country. We put these instruments of death on our night tables, in our purses, our closets, our glove compartments. But that’s not where they remain.

Guns purchased by law-abiding adults for “protection” increasingly end up in the backpacks of schoolchildren and the pockets of small-time drug dealers and robbers, gang members and professional thugs. Firearms killed two children in Los Angeles high schools this year. They killed an elderly man who stopped at a Chatsworth gas station, a bicycle shop owner in Monrovia, a 2-year-old Santa Ana boy who was resting in his father’s arms, a 7-year-old Long Beach boy visiting a friend who was handling his father’s semiautomatic handgun, an off-duty security guard who went to investigate why someone had shot the family dog.

Gunfire killed a Northridge mother waiting with her young son to pick up her daughter at a Bible study class. Gunfire killed an 8-year-old caught in a murderous exchange in a Paramount restaurant. Gunfire killed a retired nurse in South-Central Los Angeles who was sitting on her living room sofa. Just Thursday, a 19-year-old fatally shot four people at an El Cajon fitness center before killing himself.

There were more than 15,300 gun homicides nationwide last year, up from more than 14,200 in 1991. Over the last 25 years, more Americans have died in gun-related murders than were killed in the Vietnam War, the Korean War and World War I combined.

Last year, one in 10 U.S. gun homicides occurred in Los Angeles County. Obviously Los Angeles has a special gun problem. That is why The Times intends to carry forward its campaign for comprehensive gun control through the rest of the year and into the next--and for however long it takes to reduce the slaughter.

For even the grim numbers don’t tell the whole story. Guns are killing our spirit with fear. The fear of sounds in the night, fear of a dark street or an empty parking lot, even a public park on a lazy afternoon. There is no “safe” part of town anymore. The violence now follows us home; armed robbers lurk in our driveways; our own children tragically shoot each other with handguns we buy to defend ourselves.

CONSIDER THE SANER, SAFER ALTERNATIVE

It is still provocative to propose that Americans give up their right to own a gun, or relinquish the weapons they have. Yet the notion of comprehensive gun control is far from radical in most other industrialized nations. In Britain, Sweden, Switzerland, Canada, Japan and Australia, for example, private citizens generally must have a license to own a firearm and must submit to a background check. Relatively few licenses are granted, and some of those licensed must store their weapons at a club.

In 1990, handguns killed 291 people in all of these countries; in the same year 10,567 in the United States died from handguns.

No wonder Europeans are incredulous at what they see here. “Why don’t you get rid of all those guns?,” they ask.

It’s a good question, isn’t it?