Would it be absolutely cynical to say theSenate responded to what appears to be aterrorist mass shooting by declining to banthe sale of guns to people on the terroristwatch list?Nah. Let’s go for it.
This week the Senate voted on twoproposals to toughen the nation’s gunregulat ions i n the wake of the SanBernardino murders. The other onewould have tightened loopholes in thebackground-check law that are currentlythe size of the Pacific Ocean. Both failed onbasically party-line votes.
“It was a huge victory that there was avote at all,” said Dan Gross, president of theBrady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence,in a telephone conference call. We normallycelebrate winners in this country, but let’sremember the people who keep trudgingtoward a noble goal at the top of the politicalmountain, oblivious to perpetual landslides.
Histor y will someday reward them.
Meanwhile, if you run into a member of thegun control lobby, give him or her hug.
How, you may ask, could anybody beagainst depriving terrorism suspects of theright to bear arms? Well, the F.B.I. watchlist has, in the past, included some namesthrough bureaucratic error. The questionis which remote possibility you regardas worse: letting a terrorist buy a gun ortemporarily depriving a person who is nota terrorist of the right to acquire weaponry.
Most people in the Senate, it turns out,are way more worried about making anonterrorist wait to get his armaments.
Senator John Cornyn of Texas called it “un-American.”It’s always the same story. The SanBernardino murderers were wieldingassault rifles, with which they were ableto fire an estimated 65-75 bullets in rapidsuccession. Assault weapons, which seemto be the armament of choice for massshootings, used to be illegal under a lawthat expired in 2004. If the law had stayedon the books, how many victims wouldhave survived in San Bernardino, or at theelementary school in Newtown, Conn.?Given the fact that semiautomatic weaponsare totally inappropriate for either huntingor home defense, some of us would love totrade them for the possibility of reducedcasualties next time somebody decides to goon a rampage.
Senator Lindsey Graham of SouthCarolina is an excellent example of thepoliticians who totally disagree. Lasttime an assault weapons ban came up, heargued that Americans should not be forcedto rely on regular slowpoke rifles “in anenvironment where the law and order hasbroken down, whether it’s a hurricane,national disaster, earthquake, terroristattack, cyberattack where the power goesdown and the dam’s broken and chemicalshave been released into the air and lawenforcement is really not able to respondand people take advantage of that lawlessenvironment.”Graham is currently a candidate forpresident and he is actually not any crazieron this subject than most of the otherRepublican contenders. Although possiblya little more gloomy.
The National Rifle Association got tothe power perch it holds today by beingpassionately irrational and intransigent, andpoliticians follow their lead. Gun controlsupporters know their voters generally wantreasonable controls, not a universal ban onbullets, so they try to show how evenhandedthey are on the matter. (“I am not a hunter.
But I have gone hunting,” said HillaryClinton in 2008, reminiscing about thedays when her dad taught her how to shootat Lake Winola outside of Scranton, Pa.)But the opponents try for insane intensity.
When the Senate Judiciary Committeeapproved a very modest bill that raisedpenalties on “straw purchasers” — peoplewho buy guns in order to give them tosomeone barred from making the purchase— Senator Cornyn expressed concern thatit could “make it a serious felony for anAmerican Legion employee to negligentlytransfer a rifle or firearm to a veteran who,unknown to the transferor, suffers frompost-traumatic stress disorder.”People, how many of you are worriedabout the negligent transferor? But theargument obviously worked, since the bill— which was aimed at purchasers who getguns for convicted felons — never evencame up for a vote.
In response to the San Bernardinoshootings, the Brady Campaign releaseda video reminder that an Al Qaedaspokesman, the American-born AdamYahiye Gadahn, had once urged supportersin the west to take advantage of the fact that“America is absolutely awash with easilyobtainable firearms.” Mr. Gross vowedthat the Brady folk would be “calling outthe senators who basically agree with JihadJoe.”That presumes that the senators are moreafraid of being lumped with Al Qaeda thanthey are afraid of ticking off the N.R.A.
Right now, there doesn’t seem to be acontest.
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