Not afraid of the NRA

“N o people on Earth are so fearless, or daring, or determined as Americans,” U.S. President Donald Trump proclaimed in his state of the union address in January. “If there is a mountain, we climb it. If there is a frontier, we cross it. If there is a challenge, we tame it. If there is an opportunity, we seize it.” If only that were true. But an era of political gridlock and polarization has left many mountains unclimbed, opportunities not seized and grave challenges not just untamed, but not even honestly faced, in American public life. Nowhere is this failure more deadly and cruel than on the issue of firearms regulation. Despite a string of mass shootings and school massacres in recent years, much of America’s political class has repeatedly shown it lacks the moral courage to take on the fat political war chest and the fanatic propaganda of the National Rifle Association. The NRA has steadfastly opposed any reasonable regulation — limiting magazine capacities, restricting militarytype weapons, effective background checks, wait times for purchases, a minimum age for gun ownership — that would balance the second-amendment right to bear arms with the basic right of any people to be protected from mass murder. Politicians have been so corrupted or cowed by NRA millions that many Americans take it as a given that nothing will be done to regulate access to assault weapons. But the Feb. 14 shooting deaths of 17 students and staff at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida has led to a student movement, #NeverAgain, that may finally break the gun regulation impasse. These teenage survivors of the Parkland rampage (by a 19-year-old student with an AR-15 assault rifle) are a breath of determined courage and sanity. They’re not afraid of the NRA and not shy about demanding better from politicians who take NRA money or toe its line that gun regulation has no part in curbing mass shootings. They are also getting major corporations to end partnerships with the NRA. And they lay it bluntly on the line: you can help save lives or you can take NRA gold. They held Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio to the fire on this — and though he degraded himself by not pledging to turn down NRA money, he did agree to back a minimum age of 21 for purchasing a rifle and to consider limits on magazine sizes. Florida’s Republican governor, Rick Scott, is now backing 21 as the legal age for gun buying and even President Trump, who benefited from $31 million of NRA spending in the 2016 presidential campaign, spoke sympathetically about a minimum age and vowed to ban “bump stock” devices that raise the fire rate of semi-automatic rifles. But the president, shamefully, is playing both sides and still dancing to the tune of his NRA patrons. Following NRA speakers at the Conservative Political Action Conference recently, he praised the NRA and supported its lunatic proposal to arm “gun-adept” teachers with concealed guns. No one elected the NRA to run public schools and its mandate conflicts with an unbiased focus on student safety. Meanwhile, NRA leaders sound increasingly crass, unbalanced and out of touch. Executive vice-president Wayne LaPierre told CPAC the aim of gun regulation is to “eliminate all individual freedoms.” NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch accused the media of “loving” mass shootings because “crying white mothers are ratings gold to you.” These foul words and ludicrous claims discredit their speakers, not their targets. #NeverAgain’s teens are driven to save lives, not promote tyranny. The tyranny of an arrogant lobby, used to buying its way, is what they are taking on.