Deadly dereliction of duty
In case you forgot: Twenty-five days ago, a maniac murdered 58 people and injured 546 in the space of 10 minutes. Stephen Paddock supercharged his Las Vegas rampage with aid of a cheap, legal device that turns semiautomatic rifles into continuous-fire killing machines. As the nation absorbed the insanity that civilians not only can buy weapons of war, but can equip them with bump stocks that allow them to squeeze off nine rounds a second, even Republicans in Congress knew better than to defend the indefensible.
Said Sen. John Cornyn of Texas: “I own a lot of guns, and as a hunter and sportsman, I think that’s our right as Americans, but I don’t understand the use of this bump stock.”
Said Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin: “Automatic weapons are illegal. If that facilitates that, to me it would be subject to the same ban.”
A House Republican drafted legislation to ban bump stocks. And President Trump, man of his word, said “We’ll be looking into that in the next short period of time.”
Then the National Rifle Association screwed silencers on their flunkies’ mouths, counting on Americans to have gnat-length memories that wouldn’t press past the initial mourning period.
That Republican-sponsored House bill has just 26 backers — 13 Democrats and 13 Republicans. Another ban bill has the vast majority of Democrats behind it but zero Republican support.
Neither has gotten the time of day from the House Judiciary Committee. Republican Bob Goodlatte, its chairman, is too busy announcing investigations into decisions made by the Justice Department during the 2016 election.
Over in the Senate, not one Republican is signed onto Dianne Feinstein’s bump-stock ban. The Judiciary Committee is “considering a hearing.” So nice of them.
Second Amendment absolutism has gone to lethal extremes before, but what on God’s green Earth could justify stonewalling a simple attempt to do what eight in 10 Americans say must be done, and ban equipment that turns semiautomatics into automatics? Not even the NRA has the gall to say machine guns, severely regulated since 1934 and banned for new production and sale since 1986, ought to return.
To the extent they’re not just hiding like cowards, legislators like House Speaker Paul Ryan claim, with a straight face, that a ban is properly the job of regulators in the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives — not of Congress.
Yup: Republicans who have made a professional sport out of howling about regulatory overreach now pretend to defer to federal bureaucrats.
Meantime, they continue to press for federal concealed carry reciprocity, which would undermine strong local gun laws in places like New York by effectively making them subject to the weakest common denominator among all states. And to try to weaken regulations on silencers.
They have no conscience, no shame — and no business claiming to be part of a government of, by and for the people. Except dead people.