After the Allen shooting, here is a plan for politicians to go beyond thoughts and prayers | Opinion
The families impacted will grieve, the public outcry will be great, elected officials from the left will make a reflexive appeal to ban certain types of weapons and elected officials from the right will offer empty platitudes. In the end, nothing will change.
When the carnage ensues, and grade-school children and babies are torn apart by battlefield weaponry emitted from high-capacity ammunition magazines, these same officials often comfort us by offering the solution that they always offer to us: thoughts and prayers. How do I know this? Because I am a former Republican member of the Texas Legislature who dared to stand up in favor of commonsense gun control. For this heresy, I was challenged in a primary, labeled a soft-on-crime progressive and summarily unelected from public service.
If thoughts and prayers are the only solution being offered, perhaps we can find a way to make this offer more meaningful and substantive. Elected officials choosing to join the PRAYERS Project would agree to support the following commonsense reforms:Permits required. We require people to hold a permit to drive an automobile, vote, provide medical assistance and prescribe medicine.
The PRAYERS Project merely asks our elected officials to make it harder for the bad guys to access firearms, while ensuring that the good guys can acquire and keep the weapons of their choice.
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