No amount of blood seems to
IT SEEMED like a tipping point. Mentally ill gunman Adam Lanza killed 20 children and six adults in cold blood at Sandy Hook Elementary School on Dec. 14, 2012. In the aftermath, polls showed that 90% of Americans wanted universal background checks for all gun purchases, including those made at gun shows and over the internet.
But when the Senate voted just months later on a bipartisan bill, it got shot down.
The loss was crushing for people who wanted the common-sense protections and a major coup for the National Rifle Association, the nation’s preeminent gun lobby.
Three years later, on Dec. 2, 2015, husband and wife Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik were armed to the teeth when they killed 14 people in San Bernardino, Calif. That same week, Senate Republicans voted down legislation that would have prevented felons, the mentally ill and people on the FBI’s terror watch list from getting guns.
Victims keep piling up — nine people killed at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church shooting in Charleston, S.C., on June 17, 2015; 49 at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fla., on June 12, 2016; 26 at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, on Nov. 5. Scores of other people are injured, their lives not over, but yet never the same.
On Oct. 1, a lone gunman killed 58 people at a concert in Las Vegas in what’s become the nation’s deadliest mass shooting. Many lawmakers called for a ban on the so-called bump stock device that enabled the shooter’s rifle to mimic a fully automatic weapon.
The NRA opposed any new legislation, and House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) quickly passed the buck, saying a new regulation by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives would suffice.
Meanwhile, Ryan collected big bucks from the NRA, which is unparalleled in its ability to rally its base and target its cash to influence key politicians.
Last week, Ryan and most of his fellow House Republicans, along with a handful of Democrats, passed a bill to sharply expand concealed-carry rights.
The measure, which still must pass the Senate, would essentially nullify New York gun laws, making it legal for concealed-carry permit holders from other states to bring hidden, loaded weapons with them anywhere in the U.S.
On Thursday, a shooter and two students were confirmed dead in yet more senseless bloodshed, this time at Aztec High School in New Mexico.
Amid the endless cycle of shootings and overwhelming public support for what many consider innocuous but effective regulations, the NRA and like groups fend off any efforts to tighten national gun laws. They claim an unfettered right to bear arms is guaranteed by the Second Amendment — although there is no such promise in the U.S. Constitution.
Here’s a look at the top recipients of campaign donations from gun rights groups in the 2015-2016 campaign cycle, according to newly updated figures from the Center for Responsive Politics: