TIM WESSELMAN: Gun laws should favor the safety of our children

“The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes,” which led box office receipts when it opened in November, offers a stark reminder of what happens when a nation numbs itself to the loss of young life.

Thursday marks the 11th anniversary since a disturbed young man with military-like firepower walked into Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn., and killed 20 children and six adults in a little less than five minutes. It is worth asking if we have done enough to prevent a repeat of that tragedy.

Truthfully, the answer is we have not. The tragedy has been repeated at campuses from Parkland, Fla., to Uvalde, Texas, and hundreds of other campuses nationwide.

As tragedies continued to take more young lives after the Sandy Hook shooting, media reports over the years have seemed to focus on “heroes” and “cowards” at the scene or “good guys” and “bad guys” with guns.

Keep in mind, these are descriptions from real news accounts and actual suggested gun policy from gun advocates, not lines from a movie script.

In the past five years, gun violence has skyrocketed to kill more children than disease, accidents and all other forms of death. This has happened as Georgia and other states have loosened already lax gun laws and consumers purchased, according to The Hill, about 60 million new guns between 2020 and 2022. Yet, virtually nothing is being done to protect children in Georgia and other conservative-led states from gun violence.

There have been some bright points. In 2022, the now-bankrupt Remington Arms was forced to pay survivors of the Sandy Hook massacre $73 million. Also, President Biden successfully urged Congress, led by a Democrat majority in both houses, to pass the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. The bill’s sponsor, Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, led a small GOP faction supporting the law, which brings once-in-a-generation gun reform.

However, in April 2022, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and a Republican-majority state Legislature loosened the last of the regulations on the right to carry a hidden gun. Kemp sat in front of a Douglasville sporting goods store with a small group of gun advocates to sign the “permitless carry” bill into law at a time when an Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll showed 70 percent of Georgians surveyed opposed permitless carry, Georgia Public Broadcasting reported.

Passage of this law ranked Georgia near last in the nation for gun safety measures, according to Everytown Research and Policy data. The Everytown group notes Georgia has a dangerous shoot-first law that allows for shooting an aggressor in public spaces even when it is possible to walk away safely. Despite a call from nearly four dozen Georgia mayors for enhanced background checks and support for “red flag” laws that keep guns from those who present a risk of harm to themselves or others, state legislators have balked at such reform, Fresh Take Georgia reports.

News outlets near my home in Albany, a community of fewer than 70,000 people, have reported several fatal shootings in recent weeks. Also in the news this fall, football games in at least two southwest Georgia communities were rescheduled due to concerns of violence. The Albany Police Department responded Saturday to community concerns about recent shootings by releasing a statement that extra precautions were being taken to ensure the annual Christmas parade would be safe.

Is it fair to compare Georgia’s gun laws to a “Hunger Games” trilogy written by Suzanne Collins? After all, it is a work of fiction based on the idea that a government could pacify the masses with a televised contest in which adolescents fight to the death.

According to Publishers Weekly, “Collins says the idea for the brutal nation of Panem came to her one evening when she was channel-surfing between a reality show competition and war coverage. ‘I was tired, and the lines began to blur in this very unsettling way.’”

For those who find our current gun violence reality equally unsettling, there are two options.

We can continue to blame criminals for child deaths caused by legally-purchased guns, or we can demand legislators place the value of human life first. To borrow a line from Collins, “May the odds be ever” in favor of our children.

Special Photo