Letter to the Editor From Former Congresswoman Mary Jo Kilroy

Editor:

Once again, our nation has been devastated by terrible violence inflicted by a lone shooter equipped with a gun with a high capacity magazine. There have been several of such incidents including those at Virginia Tech, Ft. Hood, Columbine, and now Tucson.  I am grateful that heroes at Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’ Congress on Your Corner event were able to stop the assailant before he could reload a second high capacity magazine to do even more damage. Even with their intervention, six people lost their lives – a 9 year old girl, a young man looking forward to his wedding, senior citizens enjoying their retirement years. Gabrielle Giffords suffered a serious head injury that day, many others were wounded. The gunman, as in other mass killings, used a high capacity magazine to inflict maximum damage as quickly as possible on as many people as he could.

There is no other purpose for such a device.

From 1994 until 2004, when the Brady Gun Act was allowed to expire, such magazines were not legal. Many called for the assault weapon and high capacity magazine act to be renewed, but such efforts have fallen short even as our nation is stunned by repeated instances of deadly violence inflicted on a large scale at colleges, schools, workplaces, law offices, an Army base, and now a suburban shopping area in Arizona.

It is time to address this issue again. Rep. Carolyn McCarthy,  whose husband was killed by a madman with a weapon on the Long Island Rail Road, has introduced legislation that would ban the transfer of such magazines, as well as banning the importation and possession of devices manufactured after the date the bill is passed.

We can both respect gun owners’ rights and improve the safety of our communities by prohibiting high capacity magazines. We can break with “politics as usual” and challenge the special interests who have kept these deadly devices available to deranged killers.

For more information go to the web sites of Rep. McCarthy, or the Brady Campaign, or the Violence Policy Center. And tell your representatives in the House and Senate that you support this sensible step for the safety of our communities.

Mary Jo Kilroy

Columbus, Ohio

Advertisement