sonora2sonoma

True to her word, New Zealand’s Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, announced today that assault rifles are now banned in New Zealand in response to the recent mass shooting incidents there. The opposition party supported the ban, its leader saying it was “in the national interest to keep New Zealanders safe.” New Zealand has no legal provision to own weapons for self defense, unlike in this country, where the Constitutional right to bear arms has been perverted by interest groups such as the NRA to equate with the sort of right-wing paranoia that envisions a fictitious “they” who are coming to “get your guns.”  If countries were rated on the mental health of their citizenry, New Zealand would rate at or near the top; the USA would place in the single digit column.

Another measure of New Zealanders’ sound judgment in this matter is the prime minister’s vow to never repeat the name of the party who perpetrated the massacre. To its credit, the Washington Post omitted the name of the attacker in the article from which this information was sourced. To bring attention to those who commit such heinous acts by giving them notoriety is to compound the damage they have wrought and serves to inspire or encourage other unstable individuals who might be contemplating the commission of similar acts. One means of lessening the likelihood such behavior will occur is to remove the possibility of infamy from the equation.

By swiftly enacting an assault weapons ban, New Zealand has become a model of responsible governance and one that we would do well to emulate. They have done with legislative action what we attempt to accomplish with “thoughts and prayers.” While it’s too soon to measure the degree of effectiveness of the New Zealanders’ weapons ban, we have ample evidence in this country of the ineffectiveness of thoughts and prayers as a solution to this problem. Ardern’s statement that there is no reason for New Zealanders to own assault weapons is every bit as accurate here as it is there, yet our politicians offer no more than empty platitudes in the face of countless repetitions of this dystopian tragedy.

The solution lies not in expecting those in Congress who are in thrall to the NRA to suddenly turn on their benefactors and do something decent for a change. The cure is to vote those SOBs out of office and replace them with people of integrity for whom belief in justice and fairness matter more than selling out to the highest bidder.

Tim Konrad