The Washington Post - USA (2022-05-26)

A10 EZ SU THE WASHINGTON POST.THURSDAY, MAY 26 , 2022

Texas school shooting

movement in the states in the opposite direction. The Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence was established after then-Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D- Ariz.) was badly wounded in a 2011 shooting that killed six and wounded 12 others in Tucson. The center’s website reports that in 2021, legislators in a dozen states enacted laws “to prevent America’s modest gun laws from being enforced.” Various states have repealed laws that required gun owners to have permits to carry concealed weapons. Today, according to the Giffords Center, 21 states allow someone to buy and carry a weapon “into public places without any background check or safety training.” No law can stop all crimes, nor can any society eradicate evil. But America has a unique problem with guns. Public opinion has long been on the side of taking additional action to do more about that, but politicians — Republican politicians — bow to the loudest voices in their base, whether ordinary citizens or the NRA or gun manufactures who are adamant that any step toward restrictions is a step toward confiscation. So long as that exists, so long as the right to bear arms is seen as wholly sacrosanct and not subject to scrutiny, Biden will not be the last president to exclaim, as he did Tuesday night: “Why are we willing to live with this carnage? Why do we keep letting this happen?”

been a rush to enact them. After a 2018 shooting that killed 10 people at a school in Santa Fe, Tex., Gov. Greg Abbott (R) raised the idea of enacting a red-flag law. Resistance from gun activists and other Texas politicians scuttled the idea, and Abbott backed away. Nor are tougher gun laws necessarily the only answer. In 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed federal legislation to tighten gun laws, moving in a year in which the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated to capitalize on public sentiment. He decried the power of the gun lobby as having prevented even tougher measures from being enacted. It has been a constant refrain. There have been other steps taken to tighten gun laws. One was the ban on assault weapons enacted in 1994, a law championed by Biden when he was a senator, but the 10-year prohibition expired at its sunset in 2004. Studies showed that it might have had a modest impact on mass shootings. There has been a proliferation in the years after the ban ended. Since then, further efforts to restrict the use of high-capacity magazines have failed, as have efforts to expand background checks on most gun sales, a part of the legislation that was defeated after Sandy Hook. In the face of inaction at the federal level to make it harder for potential killers to possess and use guns, there is now

having these maladies among its population, the president noted this Tuesday night. People in other countries suffer from mental illnesses, or are lost souls alienated from their societies, or are filled with politically inspired rage. These are human traits, after all. Only in America, however, do these afflictions manifest themselves with such regularity in mass shootings that leave families grieving, communities broken, presidents outraged and too many elected officials incapable of coming together. After Tuesday’s killings, some Texas officials said that schools need additional protection, with armed police or other armed security personnel guarding the premises. This is often seen as a solution — “a good guy with a gun,” as the saying goes. Perhaps. But in Buffalo, a security guard engaged the shooter at the grocery store. The shooter was wearing body armor, and the security guard was killed. In Uvalde, two police officers encountered the shooter at the school; he nonetheless entered the school building and carried out his killings. Red-flag laws, more resources for identifying and treating mental health, and more protection for students are some of the answers offered up at times such as these. They can contribute to identifying possible killers or protecting the innocent. They are not the only answers, however. Nor has there

just 10 days after a racist attack at a grocery store in Buffalo that killed 10 people. The Uvalde episode was the 27th school shooting this year and the 119th since 2018, according to Education Week, which began compiling an inventory of such horrors that year. Think about what it means that the killings of children in their schools have become common enough to need such a list. Biden noted that in the decade since Sandy Hook, there have been 900 incidents of gunfire at schools. More than 300,000 students have been exposed to gun violence since the 1999 shooting at Columbine, in Colorado, according to a Washington Post database. No other country can claim such a shameful record. Many factors can cause someone to go into a school filled with innocent children — or a nightclub filled with happy partyers (Orlando, 2016), or a Walmart filled with shoppers on their regular rounds (El Paso, 2019), or a church where people are praying on a weeknight (Charleston, S.C., 2015), or an outdoor concert venue packed with country music lovers (Las Vegas, 2017) — and open fire. Mental illness, alienation and inner rage are among the reasons often cited or discovered after the fact. These are sometimes hard to spot, but as often as not they are seen and ignored. America is not unique in

In the decade since, the country has been paralyzed politically as one mass shooting after another takes place, sometimes only days apart, as was the case this month with the Buffalo and Uvalde killings. In the years after Sandy Hook, the NRA has been hollowed out and weakened by scandal. But no matter. The gun lobby as it exists today is a citizen-grounded movement that retains a stranglehold on the Republican Party. Instead of moves to tighten gun laws, legislatures in Republican-led states, among them Texas, have acted to loosen them. These actions further enshrine the gun culture as part of America’s heritage, all in the name of the Second Amendment, though it’s questionable that the Founders envisioned the constitutional right to bear arms serving as such a shield in the face of mass shootings of children. Speaking on Wednesday, Biden said the Second Amendment “is not absolute” and renewed his call for what he called “common sense” gun legislation, saying such a measure would not negatively affect the amendment’s rights. Tuesday’s rampage in the small community of Uvalde ended as the second-most- deadly elementary school shooting in the past decade, just behind Sandy Hook, where 20 elementary students were killed, along with six adults. It came

Hours after 19
children and two
adults were shot
and killed at the
Robb Elementary
School in Uvalde,
Tex., President
Biden captured
the range of
emotions
coursing through a shaken
country: grief, sadness,
sympathy, despair, frustration,
contempt, anger, even fury.
He offered, however, barely a
shred of optimism for action.
Robb Elementary now joins
Marjory Stoneman Douglas
High School, Sandy Hook
Elementary School, Virginia
Tech and Columbine High
School, among others, in a
roster of death at educational
institutions.
Nowhere, it seems, are
children and young people
engaged in learning truly safe in
America. Not in a nation where
guns outnumber people, where
a culture of gun violence
continues to be tolerated and
where episodes of carnage have
become the norm.
Biden called for action by
Congress to tighten gun laws,
just as President Barack Obama
did after the Sandy Hook
shooting 10 years earlier in
Newtown, Conn. Obama had
deputized Biden, then his vice
president, to lead that effort,
but a bipartisan bill was
defeated in the Senate thanks to
the influence of the gun lobby,
led then by the National Rifle
Association.

Biden lament is new U.S. norm: ‘Why are we willing to live with this carnage?’

Dan Balz

THE TAKE

BY MIKE DEBONIS

Members of the Senate — the
ash heap for decades of federal
gun-control proposals — con-
fronted another gut-wrenching
mass shooting with a distinct
sense of fatalism Wednesday, with
most Republicans standing firm
in defense of expansive gun rights
as Democrats said they were des-
perate to pursue even meager at-
tempts to prevent another trag-
edy.
Much of the reaction inside the
Capitol to the horror in Uvalde,
Tex. — where an 18-year-old gun-
man killed 19 children and two
teachers in an elementary school
— followed a familiar script, one
that has played out repeatedly
since 2012, when the tragedy at
Connecticut’s Sandy Hook El-
ementary School prompted a
months-long failed effort to forge
bipartisan compromise.
In attempting to explain Ameri-
ca’s outlier status on mass acts of
gun violence, Democrats blamed
the political and cultural influ-
ence of the National Rifle Associa-
tion and its gun industry allies,
while Republicans pointed to
mental health issues and inad-
equate school security — or simply
maintained it was too soon to dis-
cuss a legislative response.
While Senate Majority Leader
Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and
fellow Democrats signaled
Wednesday that they are open to a
new round of negotiations with
Republicans over modest new gun
restrictions, they made clear that
they were not optimistic.
“I know this is a slim prospect —
very slim, all too slim. We’ve been
burned so many times before. But
this is so important,” he said on the
Senate floor. “If you do the right
thing and persist, justice will
eventually prevail. ... And for that
reason alone, we must pursue it.”
Schumer’s remarks Wednesday
indicate that he is, for now, siding
with members of his caucus who
want to at least try to work with
Republicans firmly opposed to ex-
isting Democratic gun-control
bills in hopes of striking a deal
around some kind of narrow legis-
lation that could break decades of
congressional stasis on guns.
But if past is prologue, those
talks could drag on for weeks or
longer and peter out as public
attention turns away from Tues-
day’s shooting in Uvalde and the
killing of 10 in a Buffalo supermar-
ket earlier this month.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch
McConnell (R-Ky.) gave no im-
mediate indication about whether
Republicans would engage on a
potential compromise. In his own
floor remarks Wednesday, he
called the Texas shooting the work
of a “deranged young man” and
asked for prayers but did not men-
tion any legislative action.
“It’s literally sickening, sicken-
ing to consider the innocent
young lives that were stolen by
this pointless, senseless brutality,”
McConnell said, adding: “The in-
vestigation is still underway. The
authorities will continue to learn

exactly what happened and how.” The alternative to bipartisan talks would be to hold quick votes on two House-passed gun bills, neither of which would be expect- ed to survive a GOP filibuster, to demonstrate Republicans’ opposi- tion to modest gun-control measures ahead of the midterm elec- tions. Schumer did not rule out hold- ing those votes eventually. Speak- ing Wednesday, he acknowledged that some Democrats “want to see this body vote quickly so the American people can know which side each senator is on.” “I’m sympathetic to that, and I believe that accountability votes are important,” he said. “But sadly, this isn’t a case of the American people not knowing where their senators stand. They know. They know because my Republican col- leagues are perfectly clear on this issue — crystal-clear.” Those attitudes were on full dis- play Wednesday among Republi- cans who were fully willing to defend the private ownership of firearms — even the military-style rifles purchased by the Uvalde shooter — as a constitutional rights that should not be infringed by Congress. “I’m very sorry it happened, but guns are not the problem, okay?” said Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R- Ala.). “People are the problem. That’s where it starts.” “I don’t think when you have somebody as evil as this individual that they care” about gun laws, said Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.). “He murdered kids. He did it in a

school, apparently attempted to murder his grandmother. I don’t think he cares what somebody in Congress thinks.” Several bills under consider- ation past and present, however, might have kept the Uvalde shooter from purchasing the rifle he used to kill 21 people. The federal assault weapons ban, which was in effect from 1994 to 2004, likely would have included the AR-style rifle he used. Sen. Dianne Fein- stein (D-Calif.) introduced a bill Wednesday that would raise the minimum age for possession of such a rifle to 21. A small group of Republicans who have previously engaged on potential changes to gun laws fol- lowing previous mass shootings — such as Sens. Susan Collins (Maine) and Patrick J. Toomey (Pa.) — said they were willing to entertain a new round of negotiations. But many Democrats did not express much optimism that they would be able to bring aboard the 10 GOP votes necessary to defeat a filibuster. “I do not think on this issue there are 10 Republicans that are serious about doing the things that will make us safer,” said Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), who called the predictable reaction a “per- verse version of Groundhog Day, where we are literally seeing this over and over and over again with nothing changing.” The debate over how to move forward was already underway just hours after news of the shooting coursed through the Capitol, with some Democrats calling for

quick votes on bills that would expand background checks, ban high-capacity magazines and take other steps to restrict access to deadly weapons. But Sen. Chris Murphy (D- Conn.), who led efforts for congressional action after the Sandy Hook shooting, counseled for a different approach — seeking to jump-start dormant talks with Re- publicans to pass a bill, not make a political point. Schumer agreed to give Murphy and a small group of other Democrats, including Sens. Martin Heinrich (N.M.) and Joe Manchin III (W.Va.), time to find common ground. “I’m just going to be very willing to be part of a conversation about compromise in the coming days and weeks,” Murphy said during a Washington Post Live event Wednesday. “Because I think we do need to show parents in this country that we’re not just ignor- ing this.” Later Wednesday, Murphy tweeted that he planned “to work hard at a compromise for the next 10 days,” during which the Senate is scheduled to be out of session for a Memorial Day recess. “But if we can’t find common ground, then we are going to take a vote on gun violence,” he wrote. “The Sen- ate will not ignore this crisis.” Schumer moved Tuesday night to place two House-passed bills on the Senate calendar for potential action, but neither attracted sig- nificant Republican support in the House and neither has anywhere near the 10 GOP votes necessary for passage in the Senate.

One, the Bipartisan Back- ground Checks Act, would establish universal background checks for commercial gun sales. The other, the Enhanced Background Checks Act, would extend the peri- od to perform a federal background check on a gun buyer from three to 10 days — closing the “Charleston loophole” that al- lowed Dylann Roof, who killed nine people in a historic African American church in South Caro- lina in 2015, to purchase a gun despite a previous criminal con- viction because the background check was not completed in time. Bipartisan negotiators have ex- plored other potential compro- mises in the past that could be the spark for new talks. Murphy nego- tiated extensively with Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) about a narrowed expansion of background checks that would expand the federal def- inition of a firearms deals, but those talks petered out in 2021. A separate negotiation emerged in summer 2019, after mass shootings in Dayton, Ohio, and El Paso, surrounding “red flag” laws that would allow authorities to seize guns from indi- viduals deemed to represent a threat. A group led by Sens. Rich- ard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) nego- tiated for weeks in talks that also involved then-president Donald Trump’s Justice Department. The negotiations fell apart that Sep- tember after House Democrats moved to impeach Trump over an unrelated matter. Several senators with a long

interest in forging a gun-control compromise said they believed a background-check expansion pro- posal would carry the greatest chance of success. That includes Toomey, who worked with Man- chin in 2013 to forge a response to Sandy Hook, and Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), whose wife, former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, was grievously wounded in 2011 by a would-be assassin’s bullet. “That this body in the wake of 19 dead little kids, you know, would do nothing, I just find, is totally unacceptable,” Kelly said in an in- terview. Any talks, however, face fierce head winds among Republicans. On red-flag laws, for instance, gun rights supporters have been in- tensely wary of broadly defining what constitutes a threat worthy of suspending the constitutional right to bear arms, and they have been insistent that any legislation include robust due process protec- tions to ensure that any such des- ignation can be challenged and potentially overturned. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who was involved in the 2019 negotiations, said the red-flag proposals he has seen constitute “over- reach.” “Virtually every one that I’ve seen here has been one that sweeps up law-abiding gun owners,” he said, adding: “The ques- tion is, can we actually get to pol- icy that can make a difference but not deny people their Second Amendment rights and give them due process?” Background checks have been similarly problematic, as gun- rights groups have objected to even modest attempts to expand the categories of gun sales that should be covered under existing federal law. Instead, Republicans have sug- gested it would be more fruitful to address mental health treatment or school security. But their proposals along those lines have been modest, and Democrats have at- tacked them as woefully insuffi- cient. On Wednesday, for instance, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) went to the Senate floor to attempt to pass the Luke and Alex School Safety Act, a bill named after two of the 17 victims of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., in 2018. The bill would establish a “federal clear- inghouse on school safety best practices” and allow government agencies to identify potential grant funding from existing pro- grams but would authorize no new money to allow schools to improve security. “There’s nothing partisan about this bill whatsoever,” John- son said. “It’s just a good idea that could save lives.” Schumer objected to Johnson’s request, arguing that “the Ameri- can people want a real solution to America’s gun violence epidemic.”

Leigh Ann Caldwell, Paul Kane and Marianna Sotomayor contributed to this report.

Pessimism abounds as Senate confronts another tragedy

JABIN BOTSFORD/THE WASHINGTON POST Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) signaled that he is siding with members of his caucus who want to at least try to work with Republicans opposed to existing Democratic gun-control bills in hopes of striking a deal around some kind of narrow legislation.

The Washington Post - USA (2022-05-26)

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