America’s kids are failed again by gun reform

Nashville, Tennesse, April 4 – the day Nashville was struck by an AR gun, and four days afterward: When the insiders of the school shootings vanished

A human chain of children, hand-in-hand, shepherded by police officers, fled the latest school struck by unfathomable tragedy. On Monday, it was Nashville’s turn to join the roster of cities made notorious by a mass shooting epidemic much of the country seems prepared to tacitly accept as the price of the right to own high-powered firearms.

The reality of what unfolded inside was inhuman, but it can unfortunately be imagined given the gruesome insider accounts that emerged from previous school shootings – in Uvalde, Texas, last year, or at Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut in 2012.

Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs and William Kinney, all nine years old, were gunned down by a shooter armed with two AR-style weapons and a handgun, two of which police said were bought legally. Their names – known only to the rest of America in death – were released by police about the same time as they should have been going home from Covenant School for the day.

Firearms are the leading cause of death in American kids aged 1 to 19, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation based on 2020 data. Many guns claim that kids in violent neighborhoods, not in the classroom, but schools are now vulnerable.

Ashbey, who escaped the July Fourth shooting last year in Highland Park, Illinois, was visiting Tennessee with his family when the shooting happened. On live television, she asked how it was still happening. Why are our children dying?

We must do more to stop gun violence. The president said it was ripping the communities apart and ripping the soul of the nation. Biden made the call for action that is now a defining feature of the ineffective political maneuvering that always follows mass shootings, whether they are in schools in Texas or Tennessee or a supermarket in Buffalo or on a university campus in Michigan.

At the White House, President Joe Biden diverted from remarks at a previously scheduled event highlighting the role of women in small business to address yet another school shooting.

“I call on Congress again to pass my assault weapons ban. It’s about time that we began to make some more progress,” Biden said. The president understands perfectly that such a step was impossible in the past Congress and will be in the present one, where Republicans control the House and Democrats are still well short of 60 votes in the Senate. A presidential call for action has almost become a custom of mourning as much as a plea for political coalition building. Biden will likely be doing something similar again very soon.

One of the top Senate Republicans, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, quickly tamped down any ideas that the deaths of three small kids and three adults who looked after them would make any political difference. “I would say we’ve gone about as far as we can go – unless somebody identifies some area that we didn’t address,” Cornyn told CNN.

The Texas senator also showed the limitations and reality of the guns debate. He said that such bans were not a threat to public safety.

Cornyn had a previous role and was frustrated with Biden’s comments. The president is coming back to the same tired talking points. He isn’t offering new solutions or ideas. I think we should consider them, if he does, but so far I haven’t heard anything.

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Cornyn is right that most Americans who own such firearms never infringe the law, use their weapons recklessly or much less launch mass shootings. But at the same time, some of these weapons designed for the battlefield have the capacity to cause enormous carnage in just a few moments. The people who open fire in schools, shopping malls or bars are sometimes considered to be law-abiding until their attacks.

The political argument on guns is essentially about the rights of which Americans take priority. Is it the citizens who own these weapons who use them to wreak havoc and murder, or is it the other way around? Or should it be the victims of gun crime, like those kids and adults gunned down in Nashville, who had their rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness eradicated in a few seconds of terror?

The late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, a hero of the conservative movement, wrote in the Heller opinion in 2008 that it was permissible for the government to regulate firearms while remaining faithful to the Second Amendment. He said that the amendment didn’t grant anyone a right to keep and carry a weapon for whatever purpose.

Cornyn implied in his comments that it is a fact that the Republican Party has moved to the right.

There is a lack of common ground on an issue that is deadly important and it is a sign of the political divide in society that now lacks a common cultural understanding.

Young kids are going to school on Tuesday, even if they won’t come home after class because of political paralysis.

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“People say, why do I keep saying this if it’s not happening?” He referred to his frequent appeal for a ban. I want you to know who is doing it, who isn’t helping, so that I can put pressure on them.

South Dakota Sen. John Thune, No. 2 in Senate GOP leadership, told reporters Tuesday it’s “premature” to have discussions on potential legislation in the wake of the attack.

His comments follow those of Barry Black, the Senate’s chaplain, who called on lawmakers to take action in the wake of the shooting.

“Lord, when babies die at a church school, it is time for us to move beyond thoughts and prayers,” said Black, who has been the Senate chaplain since 2003. Edmund Burke said that good people should do nothing because evil only requires good people to do nothing.

The majority leader of the house, who was wounded in a baseball practice in 2017, said when he sees people try to make politics out of it, he gets really angry.

The first major gun safety legislation passed by Congress in three decades was signed by Biden, who also has taken executive action on guns.

The law was the result of bipartisan negotiations after two mass shootings, both within two weeks of each other, in Buffalo, N.Y. and Uvalde, Texas.

The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act allows for states to pass so-called red flag laws that allow groups to petition the courts to take weapons away from people who are threatening to themselves or others.

The bill also expands background checks on people ages 18-21 and closes the so-called “boyfriend loophole” with a law that prevents people convicted of domestic abuse from owning a gun. The legislation now includes dating partners, not just spouses and former spouses.

Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn, who was a lead negotiator on that bipartisan gun deal, said Tuesday the focus in the Senate has been on background checks, to prevent those with mental health problems or criminal records from purchasing or possessing firearms.

“The only thing I hear the administration arguing for is an assault weapons ban, which would mean, I suppose that the 16 million people who own semiautomatic rifles would have to give those up — they’d be confiscated,” Cornyn said.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/03/28/1166577083/biden-guns-congress

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“I don’t know what other purpose would be served,” he said, adding: “If there’s something that can be done while respecting the rights of law-abiding citizens, I’m certainly open to talking about it.”

Cornyn said there were no talks with the bipartisan Senate group who crafted last year’s package, which was signed by the president.

In the House and Senate, a ban on assault-style weapons isn’t going to make much of a difference.

“The director of the FBI has told us that the national criminal background check system already has stopped the sale of about 100 different gun transactions to juveniles or people purchasing with juvenile records showing they’re disqualified by virtue of mental illness or crime,” he said.

The Charleston loophole allows the sale of a gun even when a background check isn’t complete.

A group of Democrats — Reps. David Cicilline of Rhode Island, Lucy McBath of Georgia, Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas and Jerry Nadler of New York — are calling on House Speaker McCarthy to schedule a vote on the assault weapons ban that passed the House last year.

“Children should not have to fear for their lives or plan for how to defend themselves against shooters armed with assault rifles. They should not have to plan to play dead, or practice locking themselves in bulletproof rooms, or listen for loud bangs in their hallways,” the letter reads. Teens shouldn’t have to demand action in Washington or the halls of the Capitol in order to pass legislation. This is not what they do. It’s ours. We have failed.