Gordon Gammack on gun control

some things old are new again

There's not much new to be said about common-sense gun laws. 

How about something old?

On July 22, 1968, my father, Gordon Gammack, wrote the following in his Des Moines Tribune column:

Hollywood personalities are becoming increasingly involved in the gun control controversy.

For instance, I (presumably along with other columnists throughout the nation) received the following telegram signed by Kirk Douglas, Charlton Heston, Hugh O'Brian, and Gregory Peck:

"The four of us have decided to give strongest meaningful support to President Johnson's request to Congress for meaningful federal gun control legislation which would incorporate licensing of each owner, registration of each gun and a ban on all mail-order guns."

When Dad wrote this, he had covered World War II and Korea as a war correspondent for The Des Moines Register and Tribune. He’d seen a few firearms. The foot-soldiers Dad covered in World War II, and Korea didn’t carry as deadly a weapon as the average mass-shooter does today.

Ironically, Heston later became a five-term president of the National Rifle Association (NRA) from 1998 to 2003.

God is constantly being beseeched with “thoughts and prayers.” How about “God, I am so sick of this issue.” The senseless deaths. The let’s-not-make-this-about-politics lament. Or, the wondering if anyone I know will be the next to die in a mass shooting.

An assault rifle can fire off 45 rounds in the time it would take to yell, “please don’t shoot my kid!”

Can we please make it as hard to acquire weapons of mass destruction as it is to vote?

That’s it. That’s my column today, Dad.

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