By: Sharon Aron Baron
Gun control was on the mind of Democratic Chairman Mitch Ceasar when he spoke to the crowd of over 400 committee members at the January meeting.
After the long-enduring Chairman was challenged for his seat in the December elections and won, it was back to business at the first meeting of the year along with a new executive committee.
The committee members may have changed, but Ceasar remained the charismatic and well-spoken leader who kicked off the new year with a passionate speech in the wake of several tragic events involving guns.
“How many times does negative history have to repeat itself without fail?” Said Ceasar, “We as a party have a responsibility and one of the responsibilities of this party is something that transcends elections and transcends politics. To do that we have to go through some yes’s and no’s.”
Ceasar asked the audience to say “yes” to closing the gun show loophole so that those that buy guns have to go through screenings. He wants to start here and make it a national law. He said that besides assault rifles, magazine clips with over 10 bullets or more should be banned because, “I can’t remember the last time an AK47 was necessary for hunting rabbits.”
He told the audience that more than 50 percent of the states gather mental health data and more than half the states do not transmit that data to a federal data bank. So that when people are legally going through a screening process for a gun, and more than half the states, don’t participate in transmitting it to the federal bank, this information never comes up. This allows people with mental instabilities to get guns. “I think we also have to say yes to changing that.”
We also have to say no to specific things Ceasar said. “Where there was a killing in a Colorado movie theater, one Republican Congressman’s brilliant answer was, ‘Well great, let’s pass a law that will allow people to carry guns into movie theaters.’ That was a brilliant response. And when the terrible slaughter of children in Connecticut occurred, another Republican genius said, ‘Let’s arm the teachers.’ We do have to say no to crazy ideas.”
Ceasar ended his speech with a message to the NRA: “What I would ask the NRA is when do their rights end, and when do our rights begin?” To which he received a standing ovation.