Two more public mass shootings. More thoughts and prayers. We are staring down the barrel of 25 years of legislative failure. The last major federal gun control measure was the Brady Act, enacted in 1993. Although the House passed two significant gun control measures earlier this year, the bills didn’t get a hearing in the Senate. Had they passed, President Donald Trump promised to veto them.
Americans’ basic human rights are being violated on a daily basis by the failure to adopt reasonable gun control measures. Human rights protections in treaties ratified by the Senate entitle Americans to a whole panoply of explicit protections. They include the right to security, to life, to be free from domestic violence, to practice religion and to be free from racial and other forms of discrimination. Lawmakers, as the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights and several human rights bodies have noted, are required to adopt reasonable gun control measures that can save lives.