By now, the events in Tucson no longer lead the evening news. The attention of most people has turned to other concerns, important things such as football playoffs. The American public’s interest does not pay sustained attention to massacres.
That’s what happened to the other notable mass killings in this still-new century. The killings on the Virginia Tech campus, the shooting spree that killed ten people in the Washington DC area, and the murders at the army base in Texas — all have faded from the public memory. We have little interest in continuing to think about the meaning of these events.
I used to think mass murders would someday lead to action on the part of our federal government. I was mistaken.
Instead, public officials offer words of condolence for the families of those shot down. They express the nation’s regrets for loss of life. And they vow to prosecute the killers.
What you do not hear from our leaders is anything about gun control. This lack I find incomprehensible, but few citizens demand action against the widespread availability of weapons that kill with remarkable convenience.
By way of disclosure, I have never held a gun in my hands. Nor do I hope ever to do so. For me, guns are a curse on the human family, probably the worst single invention in history.
If federal and state governments do act, they often move in the wrong direction. Last summer, the Supreme Court forced the city government of Washington D.C. to abandon some of its ordinances that made owning guns more difficult.
And, in its Citizens United decision, the court also eased the way for lobbies like the National Rifle Association to contribute unlimited amounts of money in support of candidates who will reliably vote against gun control.
The NRA of course can be counted upon to invoke the Second Amendment and claim this as justification for gun ownership. At the very least, that reasoning seems to me to ignore the glaring differences between American society as it was in the 18th century and our country as it is in the 21st.
In this new century, more than 150 thousand Americans have already died from gunfire
Some states, Alaska, for instance, have passed legislation that would permit virtually anyone to carry a gun into a bar or even a church. . So much for beating swords into plowshares.
In many states you can buy ammunition to increase your gun’s capacity to fire more than 30 bullets without needing a reload. That’s what the assassin in Tucson did before being subdued.
Some members of Congress intend to carry guns as a protection. But having a gun in your possession is not going to stop someone from shooting you. Your gun stays in your pocket and does not give you any protection at all.
The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence provides statistics from research for the year 2,003. “In one year, guns murdered 17 people in Finland, 35 in Australia, 39 in England and Wales, 60 in Spain, 194 in Germany, 200 in Canada, and 9,484 in the United States.”
These figures mean that “among the 23 countries studied, 80 percent of all firearms deaths occurred in the United States.” If this data does not show something thoroughly wrong with our values, I don’t know what does.
And, in some respects, things have gone from bad to worse. For ten years up until 2004, we had a federal law that banned assault weapons. Unfortunately, Congress has failed to reenact this law, leaving people to buy ammunition clips to make certain guns even more lethal.
As Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign says: “Reinstating the restrictions on high capacity clips is simply common sense.”
Soon after the shootings in Tucson, some members of Congress made it clear that nothing would be done to change gun laws. What for me and for many other of our fellow citizens counts as basic logic, does not seem that way at all to those who take their scripture from the National Rifle Association.
How distressing to hear one of our Massachusetts senators, Scott Brown, disclaim responsibility for federal action on gun control. “I’m not in favor of doing any additional federal regulations relating to any type of weapons or federal gun changes,”
he told the Boston Globe.
He adds: “I feel it should be left up to the states.” Evidently Brown finds it satisfactory for any state to continue allowing the sale of ammunition clips such as the Tucson assassin put into his Glock gun, allowing a person to fire 30 bullets rapidly.
Is this the leadership that the country needs?
Seeing gun control as a conservative-liberal issue misses the point. To protect your neighbors and yourself against murderous violence cannot be shrugged off this easily.
Instead, putting in place common-sense protection should rank high among the priorities of all Americans.