To The Editor for an EDITORIAL NOT A LETTER:
Recently released video footage proves cops waited over one hour to storm the Uvalde gunman, so pundits are now calling them cowards. But let’s put ourselves in the exact situation:
You arrive with a partner within 3 minutes, handguns drawn, but are met with a hail of bullets from a machine gun, & are both grazed. What would you do? I mean—really do?
Sacrifice yourself as a martyr? What about your loved ones? Aren’t you supposed to have the rights of “life, liberty, & the pursuit of happiness?”
I was the only physician to go down to Ground Zero on 9/11 itself as a volunteer, & recently decided to enter an active war zone to physically deliver emergency surgical supplies into Ukraine. So I’ve got an unusual tolerance for risk. But I have the luxury of being single, without dependents (except my dog). Is it really reasonable to expect cops with families to sacrifice their lives on the alter of “gun rights”?
In any other country, this no-win scenario doesn’t exist, because people don’t think it’s their “right” to own (& God forbid, open or concealed carry) military weapons
Supreme Court justices should be able to read the Constitution contextually. The Second Amendment contains an obvious grammatical flaw that “gun rights” advocates exploit—thereby enabling mass murder:
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep & bear Arms, shall not be infringed”
As a former high school teacher, I’d redline that sentence for having strange construction that obfuscates the meaning
It should read: “Because it’s necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep & bear arms as part of a well-regulated Militia shall not be infringed”
And if Justices were being true “originalists” (as Scalia disciples claim) they’d rule that our (static) Constitution at most guarantees our right to own a single shot, inaccurate, muzzle-loading flintlock—which can maximally fire one slow-velocity (as low as 390 feet/second) round every 20 seconds. Plenty of time to stop a crazy mass-murderer. Not an AR-15, which can shoot a high-velocity round (3,300 feet/sec) every 0.4 seconds
It’s certainly obscene for me to suggest this, but I hope that a future parent who’s child is killed by an automatic weapon (unfortunately, this happens monthly) allows the media to publish photos of their child’s mutilated body, has an open casket, & invites every Republican member of Congress & every NRA member to attend
Because apparently, only by letting us violate their angel’s body once again, will our natural revulsion as human being first (and gun owners & politicians second) be triggered to finally do the right thing—permanently ban the ownership of automatic weapons by private citizens
As a former Eagle Scout who earned the riflery merit badge & former hunter, I was a member of the NRA in middle school. But by the time I was in high school in, I quit the NRA & joined “Handgun Control” because I realized it’s not ok for any crazy person to be able to shoot our President. This was back in 1981—before mass murders by machine gun became routine
In 1996, a Republican Congress passed the “Dickey Rider” which stated “none of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at CDC the may be used to advocate or promote gun control.” This has prevented CDC from studying the epidemiology of gun deaths from accident, suicide & homicide, & how to lower this public health crisis. It’s akin to Congress prohibiting NTA from studying how to decrease morbidity & mortality from car & plane crashes, or prohibiting FDA from studying how to reduce deaths from opioid overdoses. Just insane
Once Republican gun owners, Congressmen & (dare I say) Justices take a sanity pill & admit that it’s not normal for anyone who hasn’t already been “red flagged” to be able to on their 18th birthday buy a machine gun with an unlimited size clip & unlimited amounts of ammunition, & that reasonable gun control isn’t a “slippery slope” to banning all guns (which would be both logistically & politically impossible, because there are 300 million guns legally in private hands in American—more than in the rest of the world combined) this preventable carnage will end
Until that day, as our children continue to slaughter & be slaughtered, we should all look ourselves in the mirror, and ask “Who are the real cowards?”
Emil Chynn, MD, MBA
New York, NY
The writer received Honors in Epidemiology from Columbia Medical School, is a practicing physician in Manhattan, & a Scientific Advisor to the American Board of Science & Health
