Thoughts and prayers vs. hopes and dreams

Commentary by Ted Potrikus

I’m scared of guns. I’ve never held one and I don’t want to. With the dual murderous massacres in Buffalo and Uvalde still sickeningly fresh in what’s left of our nation’s conscience, I’m foursquare behind calls for more gun control. Governor Hochul and others are right, in my opinion, looking to prohibit the sale of automatic weapons to anyone under the age of 21. I’m nutty enough to go further and, personally, support banning the sale of Kevlar and prohibiting entry to gun shows for anyone under the age of 21. The last thing some adolescent male jacked up on testosterone needs is to take a walk around a gun show to look at all the pretty things he could buy to amp up the killing spree he’s got on his mind. If he can’t go into a nudie bar or buy a drink legally, then he can’t go shopping for the latest rifle bling.

I’m also a realist, though, and I fear every one of what I consider well-intentioned gun law proposals will get tossed out by a court somewhere along the long trail of American jurisprudence. Every time a court rejects a state, local, or — if they had the guts to do it, federal — gun control law, it’s one more chapter of case law that the next National Rifle Association lawyer will wave around to prove they have the United States Constitution on their side.

Take a look at what the San Francisco-based 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled just days before Buffalo and a couple of weeks before Uvalde — they threw out a California law banning the sale of semiautomatic weapons to “adults” under the age of 21. “America would not exist without the heroism of the young adults who fought and died in our revolutionary army,” wrote a judge. “Today we reaffirm that our Constitution still protects the right that enabled their sacrifice: the right of young adults to keep and bear arms.”