■ Worldwide,
about 1,100 are shot to death daily. In the U.S., it’s about 45-47 people
daily, just shy of being a quarter of the total. We kill almost a quarter of
the world’s gun-dead here in the good ol’ U.S. of A.
Why
Republicans Won’t Budge on Guns
The calculation
behind Republicans’ steadfast opposition to any new gun regulations — even in
the face of the kind of unthinkable massacre that occurred Tuesday at an
elementary school in Texas and polls that show the overwhelming majority of
Americans (up to 90 percent) support some restrictions on firearms — is a
fairly simple one for Senator Kevin Cramer of North Dakota, Carl Hulse reports.
Asked
Wednesday what the reaction would be from voters back home if he were to
support any significant form of gun control, the first-term Republican had a
straightforward answer: “Most would probably throw me out of office,” he said.
The
reality is that that 90 percent figure probably includes some Republicans who
are open to new laws, but would not clamor for them or punish a lawmaker for failing
to back them, and the 10 percent opposed reflect the sentiments of the G.O.P.
base, which decides primary contests and is zealous in its devotion to gun
rights.
Most
Republicans in the Senate represent deeply conservative states where gun
ownership is treated as a sacred privilege enshrined in the Constitution, a
privilege not to be infringed upon no matter how much blood is spilled in
classrooms and school hallways around the country.
But
as Republican voters have become more conservative, Republican lawmakers have
dug in deeply against any notion that new strictures on gun purchases are an
antidote to mass shootings. They say that such restrictions are
unconstitutional, even though adult Americans would continue to have easy
access to weapons purchases if they became law.
Republicans
like Cramer understand that they would receive little political reward for
joining the push for laws to limit access to guns, including assault-style
weapons. But they know for certain that they would be pounded — and most likely
left facing a primary opponent who could cost them their job — for voting for
gun safety laws or even voicing support for them.
■ The scene on
Wednesday on Capitol Hill had a wrenching familiarity to it, as Republican
lawmakers were mobbed by reporters and pressed on whether they could support
something — anything — to curb the ongoing gun violence in the United States.
Most who engaged said they were open to discussions, that they were happy to
review what was on the table and that maybe, just maybe, some accommodation
could be reached.
That,
of course, is Republicon bullshit. They say they’re open to discussion because
they must say something in order to dodge the reporters. They don’t dare say
what they will actually do—which is to oppose any additional restraint in gun
laws.
And
so for the sake of the political careers of a couple half dozen no-backbone
politicians, we’ll all endure more carnage in churches and classrooms and
wherever people gather in numbers sufficient to make an easy target for a
disgruntled mass murderer.
Texas Gun
Laws
By Madeleine
Carlisle, Time magazine; lightly edited
Six mass
shootings have occurred in Texas since 2016, and the gun control advocacy group
Giffords: Courage To Fight Gun Violence rates Texas as having some of the
weakest gun laws in the country, giving the laws an F grade on its Annual Gun
Law Scorecard for 2021.
“Year
after year, tragedy after tragedy, lawmakers in Texas not only refuse to pass
life-saving gun safety laws — they actively choose to strip us of our basic
public safety measures,” Shannon Watts, founder of gun control group Moms
Demand Action, said in a statement to Time.
In
2016, the state legalized open carry of handguns and required public colleges
and universities to allow handgun license holders to carry their weapons on
campus.
Last
June, Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed seven laws loosening gun
restrictions even further, including a law allowing people over the age of 21
to legally carry a handgun without a license or training. Texas does not
require universal background checks on all gun sales, and does not have a law
restricting assault weapons.
“If
anything, Texas has gone the opposite of many places, in spite of the fact that
several gun related massacres have occurred in the state during that time
period,” says Mark P. Jones, a fellow in political science at Rice University’s
Baker Institute for Public Policy. ...
YET POLLING
INDICATES most Texas voters aren’t as far to the right on gun policy as their
laws would suggest. University of Texas/Texas Tribune polls going back
to late 2015 have found that pluralities or majorities of Texas voters have
supported making gun control laws in Texas more strict, says Joshua M. Blank,
the research director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas
at Austin. Yet during that time, the state’s politicians have loosened the laws
instead.
“There’s
a disconnect,” says Blank. “[Like] other states in America, it’s not the
majority of voters who are driving this discussion and the policies being
produced in Texas.”
Rather,
it is the power Second Amendment issues have to rally the GOP base,
particularly the nearly two million GOP voters who show up to vote in Texas
primaries, Jones argues. “The key to power in Texas remains the Republican
primary, not the general election,” he says. “And in the Republican primary,
holding positions on Second Amendment rights and gun control that are well to
the right of the average Texas voter is a winning strategy.”
■ The NRA still
held its annual convention in Houston on Friday, three days after the massacre
in Uvalde.
TOO MANY
GUNS
From Gun
News Daily.com
You might be
surprised to learn that according to Small Arms Survey, there are more guns in
the United States than there are people. ... There are over 393 million
firearms in the United States, and this number only includes civilian-owned
firearms, meaning it doesn’t count firearms in possession by the military,
government agencies, or by law enforcement.
That
number means that there are enough guns for every single person in the United
States (including men, women and children) to own one, with 67 million guns
left over. That number is incredibly high, especially when you consider
that only four in ten adults say they live in a home with a gun.
And
gun sales are increasing at an astonishing rate. |