Our view: On gun control, America is watching
Whether President Trump’s push for new rules to ban “bump stocks” represents a turning point in the battle against gun violence or is merely an irrelevant bone thrown to gun control advocates is far from clear.
But the public will soon find out whether 17 more deaths in Florida will make a difference.
At least part of the answer could come as early as next week when Congress returns from recess. The Senate should quickly pass a measure to improve the background check system that has failed so many times to flag and stop firearm purchases by people already prohibited from buying guns.
The measure — pushed by Republicans and Democrats from both sides of the gun debate — is the tiniest improvement that could be made to keep guns out of the hands of felons, the seriously mentally ill and some domestic abusers. All it does is provide incentives so federal agencies, the military and states will do what they’re already required to do by law — turn over information to a federal database. Too often, mistakes or laxity have allowed killers to buy firearms even though they should have been flagged.
Each failure has cost lives. Nine at a church in Charleston, S.C., in 2015. Thirty-two at Virginia Tech in 2007. And just last November, 25 worshipers in a Texas church. Under federal law, the shooter’s 2012 court-martial conviction for assaulting his then-wife and her infant should have prevented his gun purchase. But the Air Force never sent the disqualifying conviction to the FBI database. The uproar over that failure revealed that every branch of the service had failed to send many such records to the FBI.
And now? The Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force say they’re working rapidly on improvements, but more than three months since the Texas massacre, none would state that it’s sending all the data.
The story is the same with bump stocks, the devices that enabled the Las Vegas shooter to turn his semiautomatics into even more effective killing machines so he could murder 58 people. For a few days after the deadliest mass killing in modern U.S. history, Republican leaders in Congress sounded as if they might be open to banning the devices. But then the National Rifle Association signaled that a federal agency should first look into “whether these devices comply with federal law.” Hopes for action by Congress withered.
It’s questionable whether a new regulation to ban bump stocks, as Trump called for Tuesday, would survive court challenges. A new law would be a cleaner way to eliminate devices whose only purpose is creating carnage.
Trump has indicated that he might be open to other measures, such as raising the minimum age to purchase a semiautomatic weapon from 18 to 21. “We must do more to protect our children,” he said at the White House.
Until all the details are fleshed out publicly, the value of any new proposal can’t be weighed.
So many tragedies, including the killing of 20 first-graders and six adults in Newtown, Conn., in 2012, have failed to spur action from Congress.
Now, there’s subtle evidence of change. Sixty-six percent of voters, surveyed after the Florida shooting, said they support stricter gun laws, the highest level of support ever measured by a Quinnipiac University poll.
Trump, an NRA loyalist since the group backed him in his campaign, held a “listening session” on Wednesday with survivors of mass killings at the White House. And a band of anguished and eloquent young survivors of the Florida massacre are marching, protesting, holding politicians to account for their failure to act, warning, “We will not be silenced.”
Judging by history and Trump’s comments about arming teachers, the odds against change are high. But lives depend upon beating those odds.