I recently participated in a Maine Gun Safety Coalition lobbying effort where we respectfully expressed our concerns about the lack of meaningful deterrence to gun violence. Scheduled time all too quickly elapsed and much of the exchange was spent revisiting the tiresome defense of Maine’s hunting tradition or was eclipsed by the overwhelming shock of Lewiston’s mass shooting.

The meeting ended with our representative’s assurance of supporting current legislative proposals to increase protection of individuals and the public at large. There was no address of the outright banning of weaponry clearly designed for combat, or limiting the amount of guns and ammunition one can amass.

The vast majority of America’s electorate is repeatedly polled as being for major gun control and yet incrementalism is still the best we seem to be able to do, despite assault style weapons being successfully banned nationally in the past. If true representative democracy can once again prevail, that past could and should become our future.

Congressman Jared Golden is now a remarkably unexpected point man on banning assault style weapons. As heartening as that is, does the horror of gun violence really have to be literally brought home to change hearts and minds?

Lewiston’s carnage brought our entire state to a de facto shutdown. What has always happened “away” has now happened here. Fear of public spaces is not the way Maine life should be.

Fear is where rational and irrational have a difficult coexistence. Fear makes everyone less free. Neither rational nor irrational, guns, unfortunately, do not discriminate in their ownership and, sadly, remain a very useful double-edged political sword wielded to solidify one base or the other.

Unsurprising but still sobering, I now know more women who carry a firearm than I do men. The security at the Super Bowl parade was 600 armed police, and that wasn’t enough. Another sobering thought is that most gun owners I know have little familiarity with their weapons, let alone maintain proficiency. Even many in law enforcement routinely demonstrate that they shouldn’t be entrusted with a gun.

Mass shootings now average more than one a day, yet most gun deaths aren’t from assault-style weapons but from self-assault via a handgun, rifle or shotgun. Much spousal assault involves a handgun, way too often fatally. “Guns don’t kill people,” but no one has ever been shot where a gun wasn’t involved.

I totally get the political sanctity of the 2nd Amendment, but guns do increasingly need to be taken away from many people, whatever color flag one prefers. Jared Golden finally gets it. Other politicians need to have their own wake-up call and step up fully to the plate of actual leadership. Assault weapons need to be taken out of the calculus of a “well regulated militia,” an antiquated safeguard which the advent of a standing military and national guard has long fulfilled.

The terrifying inversion of “personal protection” supported by some 2nd Amendment defenders needs to be attacked fully by today’s 200-years-plus changed reality. That no lone individual should be able to outgun a militia of 1791 needs to be clearly articulated. Maybe then the holdouts against disarming mass murders will have their own epiphany and compromise on demanding unlimited access to unlimited excess of firepower.

Gary B. Anderson is a Bath resident. 

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