Will We Ever Be Able To Confront Our Problem With Gun Violence
In the wake of the latest greatest mass shooting in US history, I’m sure we will hear some say that this will finally get this country to address gun violence and the proliferation of deadly weapons, especially automatic weapons. Having been in Connecticut and lived through Newtown, where innocent children were slaughtered in school, color me highly skeptical.
With 50 confirmed dead and over 400 hospitalized, the scale of the carnage in Las Vegas is beyond description. Obviously, there are still so many questions to answer, not only about the motivations of the gunman but also details about the entire incident in general. For instance, how did the shooter manage to apparently amass 10 guns and enough ammunition to keep shooting almost continually for reportedly 10 minutes.
A 2015 study showed that 55 million Americans owned a combined total of 265 million guns, averaging out to 5 guns per owner. Of course, not every owner has five, more probably just one or two, meaning a smaller group of Americans owns a substantial number of guns. In fact, gun ownership has dropped among the total population reportedly by 20% since the 1970s and 10% since the 1990s, even as the total number of guns continues to climb.
The NRA, which really only represents the interests of the gun manufacturers these days while wrapping itself in the Second Amendment, still has an iron grip on Congress and the state legislatures. Its efforts to pass concealed carry laws and its multiple efforts in Congress this year to remove the restrictions on silencers are simply designed to sell more guns to the very same population that already owns them and stoke fear into the ones that don’t.
But the power of the NRA will ensure that nothing will happen in Congress other than “thoughts and prayers”. As David Frum wrote in the wake of the Steve Scalise shooting, “Like ancient villagers, Americans accept periodic plagues as a visitation from the gods, about which nothing can or should be done. The only permitted response is ‘thoughts and prayers’—certainly never rational action to reduce casualties in future. Even to open the discussion as to whether something might not be done violates the taboos of decency: How dare you politicize this completely unpredictable and uncontrollable event! It is as if gun violence were inscrutable to the mind of man, utterly beyond human control.”
Congress didn’t act when a number of their own were victims of gun violence. If that didn’t shake them into action then the I truly doubt that this carnage in Las Vegas and the next, largest mass shooting in US history, which is sure to come, will either.
