It shouldn’t take a bloodbath at home for lawmakers to act on gun violence
The stubborn intransigence of gunrights absolutists has bewildered us for years. After hundreds of shootings, tens of thousands of people killed and hundreds of thousands of people injured by gun violence, we’ve spent much of the past few years asking, “How many more people need to die before we’re willing to consider reasonable gun control proposals?”
For Congressman Jared Golden, who represents Maine’s 2nd district in the U.S. House of Representatives, the answer is apparently 18. Eighteen more of Golden’s constituents needed to die, gunned down by an assault rifle, before the Marine Corps veteran and father found his conscience and abandoned his gun rights absolutism.
Golden has long enjoyed an A+ rating from gun-rights advocacy organizations. He was the only Democrat to vote against the Bipartisan Background Checks Act and one of only two Democrats to vote against the Enhanced Background Checks Act.
The bills were designed to close common background check loopholes such as the absence of mandatory background checks for personal transfers of firearms and the ability of gun shops to sell firearms without waiting to receive the results of a background check that takes longer than three days.
The latter was used by the gunman who killed nine Black people at a church in Charleston, S.C. The gunman was legally prohibited from purchasing a firearm but by the time the background check came back, the sale was already complete.
Last year, Golden reiterated his opposition to reasonable gun control by voting against the Protecting Our Kids Act. The bill contained a variety of provisions that were intended as a direct response to the shootings at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, and the Topps Grocery in Buffalo, N.Y.
In a statement at the time, Golden said he was specifically opposed to the provisions that would raise the minimum age to purchase a semiautomatic rifle from 18 to 21, as well as a maximum 10-round capacity for ammunition cartridges and magazines — a measure that has been shown repeatedly to reduce the number of victims in mass shootings.
One month later, he joined four other Democrats in voting against a bill to ban assault weapons.
Now, with the bodies of 18 constituents at his feet and 10 more in the hospital, Golden is singing another tune.
“The time has now come for me to take responsibility for this failure, which is why I now call on the United States Congress to ban assault rifles, like the one used by the sick perpetrator of this mass killing in my hometown of Lewiston, Maine,” Golden said Thursday.
One day earlier, Lewiston was the site of yet another massacre perpetrated by a gunman armed to the teeth with military-grade weapons.
While we applaud Golden’s willingness to learn from his mistakes, admit his failures and change course in the face of overwhelming evidence, we cannot help but wonder at Golden’s unwillingness to internalize the carnage occurring in cities across the country prior to the shooting in Lewiston.
We cannot help but fear for Americans living in districts represented by other gun-rights absolutists, wondering how many of their friends, neighbors and family members will have to die before their representatives finally accept the reality of our nation’s gun crisis.
And we cannot help but question whether Golden’s newfound desire to impose reasonable restrictions on weapons of war will survive the next news cycle, let alone the next election cycle.
While we are cautiously optimistic that Golden has turned over a new leaf, Las Vegas has seen this before. As the sheriff of Clark County, Joe Lombardo promoted reasonable gun control in the immediate aftermath of the Oct. 1, 2017, massacre on the Strip.
Just a few short years later, as the immediacy of the massacre waned and Lombardo became a candidate for governor, he turned his back on the victims and their families and instead embraced the politics of gun-rights absolutism and the support of fanatical gun owners. A true politician and a disgrace to policing, becoming governor was more important to Lombardo than saving lives.
Only time will tell if Golden has the courage, fortitude and moral backbone to stand with the victims of the Lewiston massacre and their families. Doing so will mean standing in opposition to some of the constituents in his rural Maine district, but certainly not all or even a majority.
Polling shows that an overwhelming majority of Americans — even in rural and conservative communities — support reasonable restrictions and regulations on the purchase and possession of assault rifles and other weapons of war.
Golden would be wise to keep these polls, and the voices of victims and their family members, close at hand. Other pro-gun legislators would be wise to look to Golden as an example of why we shouldn’t wait for tragedy to strike before taking action to protect innocent victims.
We implore Congress to pass legislation immediately to limit magazine capacity, close background check loopholes and place reasonable restrictions on assault weapons before another massacre occurs in Las Vegas, Lewiston, or anywhere else in the United States.