After a year with multiple mass shootings that caught the attention and emotions of people across the country, President Barack Obama has taken a bold step, pushing a proposal to get America’s guns under control.
The planned legislation, which the president announced Wednesday, would expand background checks, ban new assault weapons, restrict high-capacity magazines and boost laws that prevent gun trafficking.
It is a rational, thought-out response to a problem that is much larger than mass shootings. Though the president’s promise to look into gun control came soon after last month’s shooting in a Connecticut elementary school, the new proposal is not simply an attempt to stop the killings that become national stories — it is an attempt to stop the gun violence occurring every day.
The most obvious step to curbing gun violence is to ban assault weapons and we support the president’s initiative to do so. Assault weapons are designed to do unspeakable things to human bodies and have no place in the hands of anyone but trained soldiers.
The government’s duty is to protect the rights of its people, and chief among those rights should be the right to safety and security — which, for many, guns ensure. However, all guns also have the potential to take safety and security from us, and the guns that represent a greater risk with no greater guarantee of safety should be illegal.
We also believe that stricter regulations on other guns and how they can be transported, sold and acquired do not infringe upon Americans’ right to own weapons for protection or sport. When in the wrong hands, guns are a danger to everyone. Working a little harder to get a gun is a sacrifice people should be willing to make in order to help curb that danger.
After nearly a full term of avoiding the issue, we are relieved to see that Obama is willing to stand up to strong opposition and take this step.
Editorials represent the majority opinion of The Post’s executive editors.
