It’s three years after the Sandy Hook shooting and we’ve done nothing. Mass Shootings are on the rise to the highest rate in decades, but there’s zero political will from the Speaker of the House or Senate Majority Leader to do anything to fix it. In an op-ed for the three-year anniversary, former Representative Gabby Giffords wrote
Since that tragedy three years ago Monday, about 30,000 more Americans have been murdered with guns. All, like those kids at Sandy Hook, have left a hole in their families’ hearts that is eternal. Many of their deaths might not have made the headlines, but we must grieve for them, too.
Politicians don’t wake up each morning thinking about the 20 children who lost their lives at Sandy Hook Elementary. They don’t say a silent prayer over a cup of coffee reading about the latest accidental shooting or incident of domestic violence that lead to another death at the end of a barrel. They don’t care and Giffords is calling them out on it.
I know that this week, Congress will do exactly what its members have done every week since those 20 kindergartners and first-graders were murdered in their classrooms.
Nothing at all.
That’s cowardice, an embrace of the shameful status quo we’ve grown to expect from a Congress in the gun lobby’s grip. Many of my former colleagues are in the cold clutches of pessimism and its key ingredient: fear.
Americans have been clear that they do want action on these issues. Ninety percent of Americans want mandatory background checks for all gun purchases. You can’t get 90 percent of Americans to agree on anything! But they do here. Only 36 percent of Americans say we should keep our gun purchasing laws the same. There is huge support for requiring mental health screenings before you are allowed to purchase an arsenal. In fact, three in four Americans think it would help prevent gun violence according to the latest CBS poll.
Something like that would likely see huge pushback from the NRA who couldn’t care less if guns get in the hands of mentally deranged people. Selling a gun is selling a gun and gun manufacturers make money whether the person is a terrorist, criminal, mentally disturbed person or a law-abiding gun owner.
Feature image via Facebook.
Hmmmm … quite the dated, cherry picked “analysis” you’ve got here.
How about a few more recent poll numbers? Like that 58% of Americans hold a positive view of the NRA. Or how about the majority of Americans that oppose “assault” weapons bans?
Your whole “the NRA is in the pocket of the gun manufacturers” and that “congress are puppets to the NRA” has been debunked so thoroughly and so many times that the fact that you continue to parrot this crap is almost beyond shocking.
Obama talks a lot about getting rid of guns but he still surrounds himself and his family with armed guards, what a hypocrite.