Two years after the Newtown massacre, America’s gun addiction has worsened

Two years ago, this nation recoiled in horror after a maniac with an assault weapon massacred 20 schoolchildren and six educators within minutes in Newtown, Conn. Two years ago, this nation pledged that the carnage, shocking even to jaded American eyes, would snap the political system into overcoming the gun-rights zealotry that gives crazy people and standard-issue murderers easy access to killing machines.

How fickle and foolish this nation has proven to be.

The findings of a public opinion survey by Pew Research Center are grim: For the first time in more than two decades, more Americans support gun rights than gun controls.

Fully 52% of those polled said it is more important to protect the ability of Americans to own guns, while just 46% said it is more important to control gun ownership.

That’s about the exact reverse of poll numbers in the aftermath of the slaughter — never mind that firearms kill 30,000 Americans annually.

Despite commendable progress in New York and elsewhere to strengthen background checks, ban weapons of war and limit magazines to a sane number of rounds, America has moved toward blood-soaked Second Amendment absolutism. It didn’t have to be this way. In the immediate aftermath of the Sandy Hook killings, President Obama vowed “meaningful action” and tapped Vice President Joe Biden to lead a full-court press for lasting legal change.

The President and vice president pressed. The deep-pocketed gun lobby pushed back. Congress buckled, failing to pass a single serious measure.

Even a bill to impose universal background checks on gun buyers, supported then by 90% of the American people, died in the Senate.

The country weathered another year of gun violence and then another, while more Americans bought the tired National Rifle Association line that “the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”

African-Americans shifted that way in especially large numbers. Two years ago, just 29% of blacks said guns serve to protect people from violent crime; 54% agree with that statement today.

In most of the country, it remains virtually impossible to prevent a maniac from getting hold of a semiautomatic weapon with which to spray. Little wonder, according to data by the FBI and research from the Harvard School of Public Health, mass shootings have become more frequent.

Illegal guns continue to flood the streets of New York from states with lax laws and minimal enforcement. Which is why, even with overall crime declining, some 1,270 New Yorkers have been shot this year.

There’s little doubt that the criminal-justice focus of the moment — police shootings of unarmed civilians — is partially fueled by fears among cops that anyone could be armed.

Tragically, Newtown was the moment, the chance for change, that the nation missed.

Shame on us all.