Just over ten years ago while still working, I was the crime scene investigator on the murder of an 8-year-old black boy shot through the head while sleeping during the middle of the night due to a drive-by shooting. Rifle rounds - 7.62mm ones - shot at the house traveled through the second-story bedroom walls and struck this boy's head as he lay sleeping.
During the moments I was feeling and examining this shattered young boy's head to determine if there was an exit wound a naive thought entered my mind - that this killing was going to shake up this community like none other and finally some things were going to get done. How wrong I was. Nothing changed then and nothing has changed today.
The young boy's murder still remains unsolved.
Then, we had Sandy Hook and all the other school shootings, with the latest in Texas and still, nothing appears to be possible when it comes to change.
The sad thing to me in all of this is that there are reasonable gun measures that could be enacted that really are more of an inconvenience than that of infringing on the rights of gun owners but even these are not tenable due to the fanatics when it comes to gun control.
Yes, we will never be able to prevent every single shooting, but there are things we can do that could prevent some of them but one side is against all of them, and insanely so.
For example, the elimination of straw purchases (straw purchases put guns in the hands of those that would not get them in two ways - the first is by having someone legally purchase a number of guns for those that should not be in possession of them and by putting more guns in society that are then later stolen or land in the hands of criminals in other ways), instant background checks, and a graduated procedure for gun ownership just like when it comes to driver's license class ratings (for example, for a person to own an AR-15, the person must attend a specified gun ownership class and receive a firearm owner's card with class ratings just like a motorcycle or large truck classification). The point about the classification is that making it more cumbersome to be able to walk into a store to purchase an assault rifle may ensure that those that want one for illegal purchases may be dissuaded from the process.
Lastly, make it more difficult to purchase magazines with large capacities. There is no reason the average citizen should have access to banana clips or magazines with enormous capacity.
But none of these are possible just because of one group of people unwilling to compromise at all and for that, these kids will continue to die.
