Leslie and I took part in the March for Our Lives protest in Tucson today, March 24, 2018 — one of 800 nationwide demonstrations staged in reaction to the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school in Parkland, Florida, last month. The purpose, as everyone who hasn’t been lost in New Guinea now knows, is to reform the country’s gun laws to make it less likely that kids will be shot to death in their classrooms by monsters who should never have had access to any kind of firearm. In a sane country, which isn’t an adjective I’d use to describe the present-day U.S., such atrocities would be virtually impossible; so “less likely” will have to do.

The U.S. has the highest rate of mass shootings (defined as 4 or more victims in a single incident) in the developed world. No other advanced nation comes close. In the past 5 years, from a shooting in McKeesport, PA., through the all-time record in Las Vegas in 2017, to the killings in Parkland, there have been 1,624 incidents, resulting in 1,875 deaths and 6,898 injuries. Those are war-time statistics, people. If you want to see what they look like in graphic form, go to:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2017/oct/02/america-mass-shootings-gun-violence.

The deaths of 17 students and faculty at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school appears to have been a tipping point, a sea change, a moment in history when, as protestors chanted in Tucson and all across the country, “enough is enough.” The protests have been largely a children’s crusade, led by students who are fed up and frightened and fed up with being frightened. After listening to the teens and preteens speak at the Tucson rally, I vowed I’ll never utter a disparaging word about Millennials again.

This is personal for me and Leslie. Our place in Norwalk, Connecticut, is near enough to the Sandy Hook elementary school, where 20 kids were slaughtered by a deranged killer in 2012. We know people who were friends of the victims’ families. We also have three granddaughters, ages 15, 9, and 7, attending school in Miami, 40 miles from Parkland. Since the murders there, I pray at Mass every Sunday for their safety, I beseech God to protect them from some psychopath who may be out there, with murder in his heart and a gun in his hand. There is something gravely wrong with a society where a grandparent has to offer up such prayers. There is something gravely wrong when elementary and high  school kids have to go through lock-down and active shooter drills, wondering if at an unexpected moment their classrooms will be turned into human abattoirs. There is something gravely wrong when federal and state legislators ignore their constituents’ pleas for safety from gun violence and listen instead to the voices of lobbyists shilling for the firearms industry, because those lobbyists, led by the NRA, pour millions into the politicians’ campaign coffers.

By the way, I am a hunter, and therefore a gun-owner — bolt action rifles, shotguns, a revolver — no weapons of mass destruction, thanks very much. Obviously, then, I am not opposed to private ownership of guns. I am opposed to the absurd, unregulated proliferation of certain types of guns, however. An Ar-15, the civilianized version of the military M-16, along with semiautomatic rifles like the AK-47, as well as certain semi-automatic handguns, are weapons of mass destruction, designed to kill as many people as possible as quickly as possible. The gunman who seriously wounded Congresswoman Gabby Giffords at a campaign rally in 2011 fired 33 rounds in about 20 seconds, killing 6 other people and injuring 13 more. I know what these weapons can do from the butt end to the muzzle end. I carried one, and fired it in combat in Vietnam, and when I was a war correspondent covering the Lebanese civil war in 1975, I was shot in the left ankle and right foot by an AK-47. My injuries landed me in hospitals for a month, and kept me in a wheelchair or on crutches for several months afterward.

I am a member of, and a contributor to, the PAC Ms. Giffords and her husband, Mark Kelly, have set up to bring some common sense to America’s gun laws. I’ve got my own ideas on what we can do to drastically reduce firearms violence, without doing harm to the 2d Amendment.

A word about that. In a 2008 case, the Supreme Court ruled that the amendment grants citizens the right to keep and bear a firearm “unconnected to service with a militia and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.”

However the ruling goes on to say:

“Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose: For example, concealed weapons prohibitions have been upheld under the Amendment or state analogues. The Court’s opinion should not be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms. Miller’s holding that the sorts of weapons protected are those “in common use at the time” finds support in the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of dangerous and unusual weapons.”

In other words, the individual right to possess a gun doesn’t mean there should be no firearm regulations whatsoever. Indeed, the 1934 Firearms Act prohibits private citizens from owning fully automatic weapons such as machineguns and sub-machineguns except by those who have passed a background investigation much more rigorous than the background checks for buying other types of firearms. It has worked for the past 84 years, and no one’s 2d Amendment rights have been violated. I don’t know of a single incident since 1934 in which a killer has used a machinegun to  commit murder. If you do, I’m open to hearing about it.

So, to my proposals:

. Universal background checks for all gun purchases, covering private sales or transfers as well as sales at gun shows. This would go a long way to keeping guns out of the wrong hands. All guns sales should have a 3-day waiting period between the transaction and the time the customer takes ownership.

. Ban the continued manufacture and sale of military assault rifles, high-capacity magazines, and semi-automatic pistols capable of carrying those magazines.

. An absolute ban on bump stocks or any other device that converts a semi-automatic weapon into a fully automatic weapon.

. Expand the 1934 Firearms Act to cover AR-15s, AK-47s, and other military-style weapons already in private hands, offering owners a choice between turning them in on a buy-back basis or undergoing the same background investigation that now applies to owners of automatic weapons. (Australia has done something like this, and its mass-shooting rate has been reduced dramatically).

. Prohibit persons convicted of serious felonies and domestic violence from possessing any firearm; ditto for persons deemed by competent authority to be a danger to themselves or others.

Were legislation like this introduced in Congress, the NRA and its allies would fight it tooth and nail, considering that they have been pushing for repeal of laws regulating silencers and laws prohibiting veterans with mental disabilities from owning guns, even as they advocate for laws allowing guns to be carried on college campuses. That’s only a partial list of their objectives. The NRA, in its collective heart, doesn’t believe the clause quoted above from the 2008 Supreme Court decision. Second Amendment rights, in their view, should be virtually unlimited, sanctioning citizens to “keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever.” As I see it, and there is evidence to back it up, this ideological stance is partly, if not not wholly, motivated by money. The NRA long ago morphed into a fund-raising organization, as well as an organization that promotes increasing production by firearms manufacturers, who are the group’s biggest contributors. To accomplish these ends, issues like carrying guns on campus, revoking regulations on silencers, etc., have to be invented and elevated into threats to the 2d Amendment. I wouldn’t be surprised if someday they campaign for rights to own machineguns, hand grenades and rocket launchers.

Some words of caution to the young people who have started the crusade for sensible gun laws — and their adult supporters: marches and rallies are exciting, but they are no substitute for hard, undramatic work on local, state, and federal political levels. Get out and vote, if you’re eligible. Voting is an act your demographic too often doesn’t do. The NRA has already struck back by disparaging you as tools of liberal politicians, as actors, as frauds. You ain’t seen nothing yet. The gun lobby and the politicians who do its bidding are going to come at you with everything they’ve got — and they’ve got a lot. And, finally, don’t let the media spotlight, thrilling as it is, put you on an ego trip. Your cause is a serious one requiring serious, consistent effort. It should not be one that pits progressives against conservatives, Democrats against Republicans. It’s a moral cause that pits right against wrong.