Time for a New Memorial Day

The drumbeat of killings goes on.  In the past few days we have seen random shootings take place in Santa Barbara, Las Vegas and Troutdale, Oregon.  If this seems to be practically a weekly occurrence, that's because it is.  In just the case of school shootings, for instance, there have been 74 in the 18 months since the horrific massacre of first graders and staff at Newtown, Connecticut.

These deaths are tolerable, even necessary, we are told by gun enthusiasts, as part of the price we pay for the right to bear arms.  A friend of mine has an admirable idea about this.  Louie Campos proposes we celebrate a new Memorial Day.  Just as we reserve the last Monday of May to honor  members of the armed services who have given their lives in defense of our country and constitutional rights, we should set aside April 20 or December 14 to honor those who have lost their lives to gun violence so that others can enjoy their right to guns.  As Louie put it, "If that unfettered right is their idea of freedom then they need to recognize those who are making the sacrifice for their freedom."  Well said.


The April 20 date would commemorate the mass murder at Columbine High School on April 20, 1999.  The December 14 date would do the same for the Sandy Hook Elementary rampage of December 14, 2012.  But of course the sacrifice is ongoing, and the remembrance would be for those and for the many who give their lives every day so that others will have the crucial right of unhindered access to machines that fire lethal projectiles.  We lost 4,486 service members in Iraq and 2,187 in Afghanistan.  Yet these figures are dwarfed by the losses here at home to our own guns.  Every year American gun deaths top 30,000.  Over 105,000 are shot every year, an average of 289 a day.  Of these 86 die: 30 of them murdered, 53 by suicide, 2 by accident and 1 at the hands of police.  Between 2000 and 2010 335,609 Americans died after being shot by guns.  That is more people than live in St. Louis or Pittsburgh.  Stretch that out to 2013 and the number comes to over 400,000, or more Americans than died in World War II.

It is only fitting that the hundreds of thousand of Americans whose lives have been forfeited for the rights of others should be remembered.  That's the American way.