Our Constitutional Right: Sanity

On 9/9/99, millions of children around the United States will go back to school. You remember school. That’s the place a mommy or daddy used to send a kid off to in a new Mickey Mouse shirt or a Michael Jordan jersey or a pinafore with a cotton knit blouse, not a bulletproof vest.

Wellington Webb, the mayor of Denver, has handpicked 9/9/99 as the day he wants other mayors and their chiefs of police from all across America to stage a mass march on Washington, D.C.

Why 9/9/99?

Because I believe Webb wants legislators to be fretting over the safety of their own school-age children when asked for the umpteenth time to stop all that talk-talk-talk about gun control and do something about it.

The rampage in Granada Hills was the last straw for Webb, who has been waiting impatiently for months--since the Littleton massacre--for somebody empowered to take action to actually act.

Instead, all we get is Rosie O’Donnell debating Tom Selleck and a nation that is going from the Jeopardy round to the Double Jeopardy round on its way to the Final Jeopardy round.

Well, Wellington Webb figures it is time for a kind of Million Mayor March.

He urges civic leaders and top cops to go to the nation’s capital on 9/9/99 and implore Congress “to support responsible and effective gun control legislation” before we’re all DOA by 1/1/00.

In other words, what we need is a shootout at the D.C. corral.

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Gun owners get sick of this too.

They dislike catching flak every time some lunatic starts callously squeezing a trigger. They feel like kids in school kept after class, just because one dunce did something wrong.

Take Bill Benson, for instance.

He lives in Orange. He owns guns. He doesn’t want to shoot anybody. He just wants to own guns.

“I’m a former Marine,” Benson says. “I spent 13 years defending the rights of children to grow up safely. I put my butt on the line to make sure that anyone could worship their God (or gods) in their own way.

“Every time I see innocents become casualties of some crazy’s weapons, I see red.

“And now, thanks to some jackass with poison in his heart and a complete disregard for the value of not only human life, but a child’s life, I am now linked with this episode because I happen to believe that I should have the right to own my guns.”

It’s a sane point of view.

A firearm owner who keeps a collection locked in a case, who keeps a licensed weapon unloaded, who keeps a trusty rifle in a gun rack because he lives near a forest where a man-eating lion has been lurking looking hungry . . . these are individuals who sincerely believe a gun can be possessed responsibly.

Of course, so can a lion.

That doesn’t mean everyone should be able to keep one around the house.

Handguns and automatic weapons need to be confined to active military and police personnel. All others should be confiscated. A civilian holding a weapon had better be able to produce a hunting license with one hand and a turkey with the other--and the calendar had better damn well read November.

“Our constitutional rights”--a hackneyed phrase if ever there was one--date back to a document drafted in 1787 and ratified in 1789, by men who denigrated women and owned slaves. Americans need no more blindly obey every word these men penned throughout eternity than Italians need thump their chests with their fists and hail Caesar.

Just because good notions have noble origins is no reason for them never to undergo change.

We need to update yesterday’s laws for today’s outlaws.

A day of gunplay like last Tuesday’s at the Jewish community center is a stark example.

This is clear even to a dedicated gun owner like Benson, the ex-Marine. Treat a hate crime culprit same as a terrorist. “That way,” Benson says, “these [assailants] aren’t protected by the Constitution. As threats to the Constitution, we could bring serious punitive action against them--like, say, the entire 1st Marine Division.

“Failing that, how about an hour with that monster with a fistful of bamboo skewers? Let’s see how tough this coward is.”

Nah, two wrongs don’t make a right.

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A more plausible idea is Wellington Webb’s, putting pressure on Congress to ease America’s stress.

Short of torturing them with bamboo under the fingernails, what we need to do is force elected officials to produce results. How? Well, a private citizen has a straightforward suggestion--with something along the lines of a nationwide “We Won’t Send You Back” movement, says Robert S. Ellison, a doctor from Arcadia.

Ellison proposes that constituents write their representatives and warn: “If you don’t make every effort to pass an appropriate gun control bill in this Congress, you will not receive my vote in the next election.”

And if that doesn’t work?

Then tell your local mayor to get his butt to Washington on 9/9/99. Tell him to get the lead out.

Mike Downey’s column appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Write to him at Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, CA 90053. E-mail: mike.downey@latimes.com.