(ThyBlackMan.com) “Today’s ruling is a watershed win for good men and women all across America and is the result of a decades-long fight the NRA has led.” This was the official statement from long time NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre. He was so happy he couldn’t see straight after the SCOTUS in a sweeping decision on gun restrictions in New York virtually knocked out any controls on guns.
This is the same LaPierre who did one of the greatest political tightrope acts in history following the Uvalde, Texas school massacre in May. He condemned the killing without once mentioning the word “gun” let alone “control.” LaPierre also wasn’t shaken by the tepid, modest, and virtually toothless congressional gun control bill finally Congress passed after decades of resistance. The SCOTUS decision pretty much rendered the congressional action meaningless.
The same could hardly be said about the continuing gun carnage in America that La Pierre and the gun lobbies see, hear, and speak no evil about. At the start of June, the country had wracked up 246 mass shootings. This was a record pace. Massacres were getting so routine and commonplace, that there was a real danger that they’d no longer make the news.
The one meaningful piece of gun restrictive legislation that did any good was the 1994 assault weapons ban passed during the Clinton administration. It had a ten-year shelf life. To no surprise, it was not renewed in 2004. The NRA and the gun lobbies hated every moment of time that it was on the books. They worked overtime to make sure that when it came up for renewal it was dead in the water.
The assumption is that the NRA and the gun lobby are so all-powerful, and financially well-heeled, that they can beat back any congressional move to impose tougher restrictions on gun access. It certainly has done an expert job for decades at doing that. The NRA, for instance, did not issue an official statement on the Sandy Hook school massacre in 2012 that claimed the lives of twenty-six school children. It has been virtually mum on the many massacres in the decade after Sandy Hook.
The NRA’s money, political influence, and the saber rattle of gun control opponents were only part of the reason that tougher gun control laws, no matter how many heartbreaking massacres occurred, always faced a tough fight. It harked back to what then President Obama said about the country’s gun tradition and history after his many attempts to prod Congress to act on gun control. That is gun ownership is a fact of American life and a rigidly protected constitutional right.
In the White House Obama simply followed the precedent of nearly all presidents and that was to leave tougher restrictions on gun sales and trafficking to the states. Some states did pass laws that banned assault guns and high-capacity ammunition magazines, limited the number of gun sales, required child safety locks on new guns, and outlawed the sale of cheap handguns.
The huge drawback to the state-by-state gun action is that it does not significantly limit the massive trafficking in guns across state lines. It also doesn’t begin to address the question of how to identify and then prevent the legions of human ticking time bombs that do not have a criminal record and appear to be normal functioning individuals from legally purchasing and even stockpiling weapons, which includes weapons of mass destruction. Only Congress can pass a uniform federal standard to restrict the manufacture, sale, and transport of guns.
This is where the fight begins and unfortunately has through the years quickly ended. Congress was virtually mute on any gun curbs in the years since the expiration of the assault ban. This did not mean that gun control bills weren’t written and introduced. They were in every congressional session. But not one piece of gun control legislation made it to the House floor. In almost all cases, none of the proposed gun control curbs even made it out of a House committee.
Gun control curbs were not dead in the water in perpetuity in Congress. Following the Robb school massacre and the murder by a white supremacist of ten Blacks in a Buffalo supermarket in May 2022, gun control was back on the congressional table. Biden and the Democrats had been lobbying for months before the massacres for a tough new gun control law. They as usual got nowhere. But now with a freshly aroused public outcry after the Texas massacre, there was some movement.
A handful of Republicans agreed to consider proposed legislation. The most significant required stringent background checks and an intensive review of juvenile and mental health records on sales to those under age twenty-one. Even with this the ancient problem remains. The proposed law does not ban outright the sale of assault weapons to young people. Nor does it ban the sale of these weapons to anyone. The loopholes skirting even this law are still wide open.
If the GOP and more than a few Democrats have their way that’s not likely to change. The result: America will still resemble more a gunfight at the OK Corral with more massacres and with the human pain and suffering they bring being the order of the day.
Written By Earl Ofari Hutchinson
One can find more info about Mr. Hutchinson over at the following site; TheHutchinson Report.
Also feel free to connect with him through twitter; http://twitter.com/earlhutchins
He is also an associate editor of New America Media. His forthcoming book is From King to Obama: Witness to a Turbulent History (Middle Passage Press).
