Mwalimu-G
Elder Lister
Stephen Collinson and Caitlin Hu
'What are we doing?'
In a macabre sign of familiar activity beginning to resume in America, gun rampages are back. On Monday night, a lone killer ended another 10 lives in a supermarket in Colorado --the seventh mass shooting in seven days, in a state already scarred by past mass killings. And Washington quickly retreated to its old frustrating spot.
Democrats and gun control advocates are demanding “common sense” reform to make it harder for criminals and mentally ill people to get their hands on deadly weapons, and they’re rebuking conservatives who offer “thoughts and prayers” but block reform. Republicans reply that firearms reforms will make it harder for people to protect themselves from crime, and rile up gun owners by falsely claiming that precautions like background checks mean Democrats aim to ban guns.
America’s attitude toward guns is one of the hardest things for foreigners to understand. Why should someone’s freedom to bear arms supersede another person’s liberty to shop for groceries without being gunned down?
In the frontier mentality of many in America’s heartland, gun ownership is a rite of passage, an expression of God-given freedoms and a quintessential symbol of self-reliance and independence from government. In the other, more suburban, liberal half of the country, citizens wonder why anyone should possess a fast-firing weapon of war that can wipe out groups of people — and school kids, as history has repeatedly shown — within seconds. They point to nations with tougher gun laws, where massacres are rare.
That gulf of perception helps explain why gun reform always fails. For decades, the existential attachment to the Second Amendment among conservatives has been more intense than the desire of liberals to enforce reform. There are signs the intensity of reformers is catching up. But opponents can wield Senate rules that kill gun control laws by requiring a supermajority for passage. Even with the current Democratic monopoly on power in the presidency and Congress, prospects are poor for whatever modest changes reach the 50-50 Senate.
The White House flag will be raised back to full height eventually. But it won’t be long before it’s tethered at half-staff again
