Editorial: Getting it mostly right in NHP protest

The Island Now

More than a dozen elected officials and activists who oppose gun violence filled the sidewalk outside the Inn at New Hyde Park last Thursday to protest an NRA fundraiser.

We thank them for using their First Amendment rights to assemble and to protest an organization that has promoted a twisted version of the Second Amendment to allow gun manufacturers to make large profits at the expense of human suffering on a vast scale.

Those assembled also heard a powerful message from Linda Beigel Schulman of Dix Hills, who lost her son during the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida, last year.

Her son, Scott Beigel, was a teacher at the school who died protecting the students, she said. Schulman shared the photos of her son’s final moments.

We can think of nothing more difficult for Schulman to share or more moving for those who listened to her.

Most horrifying is how common gun deaths are in the United States.

In 2017, the most recent year for which complete data is available, 39,773 people died from gun-related injuries in the U.S., according to the CDC.

This figure includes gun murders and gun suicides, along with gun-related deaths that were unintentional, involved law enforcement or whose circumstances could not be determined.

In 2017, six in 10 gun-related deaths in the U.S. were suicides, while 37 percent – 14,542 – were murders, according to the CDC.

The need for common-sense gun legislation has never been more apparent. Nor has the need ever been greater for research into the causes of and remedies for gun violence. Incredibly, Congress at the behest of the NRA has for years blocked any research into the causes and remedies of gun violence.

If ever there was an admission of guilt by the gun industry that is it.

But too often supporters of gun safety have trained their aim on the wrong targets.

Rachel Klein, founder of Long Islanders for Gun Safety, criticized the Inn at New Hyde Park  for allowing the event to take place – as if it was a catering facility’s fault that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell won’t let legislation for universal background checks passed by the House to be voted on in the Senate.

In her criticism, Klein echoed a complaint that state Sen. Jim Gaughran (D-Northport) has made two years in a row about the inn.

Gaughran said last week he is introducing legislation that would prohibit firearms from being given as prizes in raffles or games of chance – this in a country with 393 million firearms.

The legislation appears to be in response to a flyer from the Friends of NRA, the group sponsoring the event, that sought to attract attendees with raffle prizes that included the 2019 gun of the year set, a Sig Sauer P210 American Standard 9 mm pistol, decked out with a Friends of NRA decal. Other prizes include a Kimber Micro 9 mm with an NRA logo, a Henry single shot brass .45-70 with an NRA logo, and Mossberg 500 Pump-Action 12-gauge shotgun combo.

This may not be your idea of a prize, but the guns are legal and are sold at many stores including one just a few miles away from the Inn at New Hyde Park. So why legislation barring a legal product from being used in a raffle.

State Sen. Anna Kaplan (D-Great Neck), who echoed Gaughran’s approach last year, continued in a better direction this year by presenting new legislation to “keep untraceable firearms out of N.Y. communities” at the event.

According to Kaplan’s office, the bill would prohibit the possession of unfinished parts for weapons called frames, unfinished receivers and 80 percent receivers that Kaplan’s office said can be made into a usable parts for an AR-15 rifle after some work.

Kaplan recently co-sponsored legislation signed into law by Gov. Andrew Cuomo that requires out-of-state firearm buyers to submit to mental health background checks.

That legislation further strengthens New York State gun safety laws that are arguably the toughest in the country.

But as we all know New York’s efforts are not enough. Lax laws in other states and the federal government leave us vulnerable to weapons banned or restricted here coming in from other places.

Nearly daily mass shootings and protests led by friends and family members of victims as seen in New Hyde Park have created a strong push for common-sense gun safety legislation in many states and Washington, D.C.

For the first time, many supporters of gun safety supporters have the same focused intensity of those who oppose any gun-safety legislation.

But the biggest obstacles is not the Inn at New Hyde Park or even, in a sense, the NRA. It is a political system in which big business trumps the will of the people.

How else to explain the inability to get legislation requiring universal background checks, a proposal supported by 90 percent of the American public. Included are 70 to 80 percent of  NRA members.

The answer to the problem of corporate interests coming before the public interest is the type of activism demonstrated at the protest in New Hyde Park. That’s where to keep the focus.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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