By E.J. Dionne Jr., Op-Ed of Washington Post
Try to imagine that hundreds or thousands of guns, including assault weapons, were pouring across the Mexican border into Arizona, New Mexico and Southern California, arming criminal gangs who were killing American law enforcement officials and other U.S. citizens.
Then imagine the Mexican president saying, “Well, we would really like to do something about this, but our political system makes helping you very difficult.” Wouldn’t Mexico’s usual critics attack that country’s political system for corruption and ineptitude and ask: “Why can’t they stop this lawlessness?”
That, in reverse, is the position President Obama was in last week when he visited Mexico. The Mexican gangs are able to use guns purchased in the United States because of our insanely permissive gun regulations, and Obama had to make this unbelievably clotted, apologetic statement at a news conference with Mexican President Felipe Calderón:
“I continue to believe that we can respect and honor the Second Amendment rights in our Constitution, the rights of sportsmen and hunters and homeowners who want to keep their families safe, to lawfully bear arms, while dealing with assault weapons that, as we know, here in Mexico, are helping to fuel extraordinary violence. Violence in our own country as well. Now, having said that, I think none of us are under the illusion that reinstating that ban would be easy.”
In other words: Our president can deal with all manner of big problems, but the American gun lobby is just too strong to let him push a rational and limited gun regulation through Congress.
It’s particularly infuriating that Obama offered this statement of powerlessness just a few days before today’s 10th anniversary of the massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado — and just after a spree of mass homicides across the United States took the lives of least 57 people.
No other democratic country in the world has the foolish, ineffectual gun regulations that we do. And, unfortunately, what Obama said is probably true.
Earlier this year, when Attorney General Eric Holder called for a renewal of the ban on assault weapons — he was only repeating a commitment Obama made during the presidential campaign — the response from a group of 65 pro-gun House Democrats was: No way.
Their letter to Holder was absurd. “The gun-control community has intentionally misled many Americans into believing that these weapons are fully automatic machine guns. They are not. These firearms fire one shot for every pull of the trigger.” Doesn’t that make you feel better?
Those Democrats should sit down with Gov. Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania. “Time and time again, our police are finding themselves outgunned,” Rendell said in Harrisburg last week. “They are finding themselves with less firepower than the criminals they are trying to bring to justice.”
The Democratic governor told his own state’s legislators that if they didn’t support such a ban, “then don’t come to those memorial services” for the victims of gun violence. “It’s wrong,” he said. “It’s hypocritical.”
And why can’t we at least close the gun show loophole? Licensed dealers have to do background checks on people who buy guns. The rules don’t apply at gun shows, which, as the Violence Policy Center put it, have become “Tupperware Parties for Criminals.”
But too many members of Congress are “petrified” of the gun lobby, says Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.), a crusader for sane gun legislation ever since her husband was killed and her son paralyzed by a gunman on the Long Island Rail Road in 1993.
Family members of the victims of gun violence, she says, are mystified by Congress’s inability to pass even the most limited regulations. “Why can’t you just get this done?” she is asked. “What is it you don’t understand?”
Obama, at least, should understand this: He was not elected by the gun lobby. It worked hard to rally gun owners against him — and failed to stop him.
According to a 2008 exit poll, Obama received support from just 37 percent among voters in households where guns are present — barely more than John Kerry’s 36 percent in 2004. But among the substantial majority of households that don’t have guns, Obama got 65 percent, up eight points from Kerry. Will Obama stand up for the people who actually voted for him?
Yes, I understand about swing voters, swing states, the priority of the economy and all that. But given Congress’s default to the apologists for loose gun laws, it will take a president to make something happen.
April 29, 2009 • 4:34 pm 0
Gun violence is more serious plague than swine flu scare
By Cynthia Tucker, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The deadly contagion is spreading, striking down young and old, well-heeled and downtrodden, sophisticates and illiterates. Last year alone, the affliction killed thousands in Mexico and even more in the United States.
Not swine flu. Gun violence. While federal and state authorities are preoccupied with preventing a swine flu pandemic from overwhelming the United States, the epidemic of gun violence rages on, unabated and little noted.
Last Saturday, George Zinkhan III, a well-respected University of Georgia professor, took two handguns to a community theater and killed his wife, Marie Bruce, and two of her theater colleagues while wounding two others, police said. Zinkhan left his 10-year-old daughter and 8-year-old son in his car while he went on his bloody rampage, according to authorities. Then, he dropped the children off at a neighbor’s house —- he explained he had an emergency —- and fled, police said.
Don’t expect that this latest mass killing will arouse any more outrage or prod any more public action than those that preceded it. In March and April, gunmen of curious motive and deranged sentiment opened fire in a nursing home, a community center, their own homes and public spaces, killing family, friends and strangers.
Among the lowlights of this savage spring were the murders of two children of Devan Kalathat, who shot them and three other relatives before he killed himself; the murders of five children of James Harrison, who killed them before committing suicide; and the murders of the daughter and nephew of Kevin Garner, who, similarly, killed his estranged wife, his sister and the children before turning his gun on himself, law enforcement officials said. The shootings produced outpourings of grief and outbursts of anger but few calls for tighter gun laws.
In fact, state legislatures in the South, including the Georgia General Assemly, have recently loosened laws that deal with weapons in public places. In Georgia, gun owners with concealed-carry permits may now take their firearms into state parks, onto public transit and into many bars and restaurants.
Moreover, the sales of firearms and ammunition have soared over the last several months, sparked by the election of President Barack Obama and the belief that Democratic control of the White House and Congress will lead to restrictions on gun ownership. It’s a strange notion with absolutely no basis in fact.
Witness Obama’s tepid response to Mexican authorities who pleaded for help in stopping the flow of deadly firearms from the United States into the hands of drug thugs.
After Attorney General Eric Holder suggested the Obama administration might push to reinstate the ban on assault weapons, which expired in 2004, the White House received a letter signed by 65 craven Democrats insisting that the president leave assault weapons alone. Obama agreed to do nothing.
We have an odd way of assessing risks. While swine flu may yet emerge as a full-scale pandemic, it hasn’t proved especially lethal so far. Even in Mexico, where public health facilities are not as well developed as in the United States, the death toll has crept past 150 but hasn’t claimed lives on the scale of drug-related gun violence.
Yet, swine flu has prompted the travel industry to brace for a panic; pharmacies report a run on supples of antivirals such as Tamiflu; and the news media have hurriedly produced new catchphrases for their round-the-clock swine flu reportage. President Obama has dispatched Cabinet-level advisers to assure Americans that his administration is doing everything necessary to prevent the spread of the disease.
If only we could muster half that hysteria over gun deaths.
Cynthia Tucker is editorial page editor. She can be reached at cynthia@ajc.com. See original editorial at ajc.com
Filed under: Comment on Gun Violence, Editorial