Seeking gun safety legislation is the loneliest place
Congress is moving closer to adopting gun safety legislation. As of Thursday, a bipartisan group of senators was discussing providing incentives to states to adopt red-flag laws, expanded background checks that include access to juvenile records, and increase the age requirements for the purchase of rifles.
Schools, churches, synagogues and grocery stores have been the sites of mass murders, most recently an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. The dead shooter appears to have been a familiar type that torments random victims and our nation — friendless and isolated. Like the others, the Uvalde killer had easy access to powerful weapons, including the mass murderer’s gun of choice, an AR-15 rifle.
The Second Amendment to the Constitution refers to a well-regulated militia as the predicate to the right to bear arms. No militia, well-regulated or otherwise, would want any of these monsters as a member. There are more guns than people in the United States. We have a right to draw lines and impose restrictions. A segment of our population continues to equate broad freedoms with the right to possess guns. They are a narrow segment of our citizens, but they are loud, persistent and vote in Republican primaries.
Matthew McConaughey, the Oscar-winning actor who grew up in Uvalde, went to Washington to make the essential argument: A hefty majority of Americans wants our government to keep powerful weapons out of the hands of murderous lunatics. McConaughey pointed out that the middle ground of Americans’ views is crowded with people who agree. What he did not say is that it’s also the loneliest place if you are looking for leaders.
The negotiations in Washington include Connecticut’s two U.S. senators, Christopher Murphy and Richard Blumenthal for the Democrats. They have resigned themselves to incrementalism. Blumenthal has been
at the forefront of advocating and, it appears, shaping a red-flag law, which allows someone who sees behavior that indicates a danger to himself or others to petition law enforcement or a court to intervene. These laws may become more effective as mass murderers continue to publish their intentions on the internet.
The only controversy over raising the age to purchase an assault weapon from 18 years to 21 year ought to be why it was not done long ago. Negotiators are exploring giving law enforcement officials access to a gun purchaser’s juvenile records as part of expanded background checks. Life does not begin at 18 or 21. Connecticut has been through the ordeal of policies based on the premise that there are no insights to be gained by law enforcement officials or judges having access to juvenile records.
Some states impose a waiting period between the purchase date of a weapon and the day on which the buyer is allowed to take possession of it. A waiting period may provide time for a murderous impulse to diminish or, more common for handgun purchases, to thwart a suicide. Waiting periods are not part of Senate negotiations.
There will be a lot of money sloshing around any bill that Congress passes as incentives for states to act. One to include: no money to states that underwrite the retail sales of guns — like Connecticut. Less than a year after 2012 slaughter at the Sandy Hook School, former Gov. Dannel P. Malloy provided more than $30 million in state assistance to Bass Pro Shops to build a store and sell guns in Bridgeport — at the same time the city was engaged in a gun buyback program. Bass Pro Shops was selling assault weapons in states that had not banned them, which was most states.
Murphy and Blumenthal raised no objection to the state providing a massive subsidy to a gun retailer while they were in Washington raging against the proliferation of guns. They were joined in silence by every other state official.
NBC News political reporter Jonathan Allen on Tuesday’s Bulwark podcast provided a simple way to measure the seriousness of any bill that makes it through the Senate. The more likely senators “are to get something done, the less it is they are doing.” A bill that wins the minimum 60 votes will include more effective reforms than one that wins 70.
In the aftermath of Uvalde, the public cried out for something to be done. If senators who are in the thrall virulent gun advocates vote for a proposal, it will signal, sadly, not that the message has at last gotten through, but that the compromise is on the edge of meaningless.