Few things are certain in this world, but there’s one prediction I can make: When the Mayan apocalypse comes and goes this weekend, life will continue as it always has.
Unfortunately for the United States, this means that mall shoppers, moviegoers and schoolchildren will be gunned down on a regular basis. It sounds cruel and cynical of me to say this, but we are now at the point where this sort of thing is no longer news. I’ve written about three such incidents in 2012 alone. There have been many more; the two that happened last week are just the latest ones.
On TV, Barack Obama cried and choked up for a long moment as he expressed his sadness when hearing what happened. It doesn’t mean he’ll do anything about it. He didn’t do anything when Gabrielle Giffords was shot. He didn’t do anything when a bunch of kids were shot and killed in their school in Ohio in February. He didn’t do anything when Trayvon Martin was killed in March. He didn’t do anything when the Batman killer struck this summer.
This would be his opportunity, though. In a second term, with no hand-picked successor, he can stand up and say what he wants without fear of losing popularity. The president has the power to introduce legislation in Congress. He also has the power to issue executive orders in the interest of national security.
For days, The New York Times, which is widely read in Connecticut — Newtown, where the latest school shooting happened, is basically a Gotham suburb — has been full of articles and commentary on gun control. It’s interesting to see what excuses are made for not restricting access to assault weapons:
- Compared to 30,000 traffic deaths a year, school shootings kill hardly anybody. This is all newspaper sensationalism. (Perhaps, but individual gun murders and accidents kill 10,000 Americans a year, as Spotlight columnist Peter Flynn pointed out in November.)
- It would be wrong to “politicize” the issue of guns while people are mourning.
- If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.
- Gun restrictions did not stop the massacres in Norway and Winnenden, Germany.
- If the teachers had guns, they could shoot back.
- The problem is not guns, but mental illness.
Access to assault weapons actually was restricted following an assassination attempt on a Republican president — so it can be done. However, the ban was allowed to expire in 2004. Since then, a dozen unsuccessful attempts have been made to reinstate it. Senator Dianne Feinstein, a prominent California Democrat, has promised to try again as soon as the new Congress meets in January.
A petition on the White House website asking the Obama administration to “immediately address the issue of gun control through the introduction of legislation in Congress” has received 190,000 signatures in five days.
So something might happen. But unless it does, I won’t be writing about gun violence in this column next year. It is simply not news.
The commenters on the New York Times website are of one mind:
Reed in California: I’d like to see the president on TV again, choked up and with tears in his eyes again, and hear him say that though it breaks his heart, he does not have the courage or the political capital to stand up to the gun lobby.
Jim in Pennsylvania: With this horrible tragedy will follow reports in the coming weeks of ammo and firearms shortages across the country as gun owners “stock up” in fear of more gun control. The cycle never ends, and the madness will continue.
[Editor’s note: It’s already happened.]
Meredith in New York: Was Obama shaken up enough yet to strongly use his office to push for change in gun laws? Was there enough Kleenex to dry his tears while he goes back to business as usual?
JP in Michigan: [Will] we now see a documentary named Bowling for Connecticut?
Mavis Tavis in Kentucky: We need to take a long, hard look at our culture and ask the question, “Why do so many young men approach their own personal problems with such antisocial, homicidal solutions?”
Brian Dewitt in California: It might be said that planes flying into buildings don’t kill people; people kill people. Yet, after the 9/11 attacks, laws were enacted to prevent terrorists obtaining planes, including increased airport security, screening of passengers, [and] invasive pre-boarding searches. These measures impose significant inconvenience on law-abiding travelers, but they have prevented another domestic terrorist incident involving an aircraft. This was seen as an acceptable trade-off and so should restricting gun purchases and ownership, especially automatic weapons, to keep guns out of the hands of the mentally disturbed and thereby reduce gun deaths.
Gennady Shkliarevsky in New York: Let’s face it: we as a nation show our total powerlessness to do anything about these tragedies. We have no solution. We will bog down in endless debates with tired arguments, but little, if anything, will be done. It is amazing that the nation that considers itself the nation of doers is so powerless against this and many other problems that we as a nation face.
