(Dobbs) "If It Would Only Save One Life, Wouldn't It Be Worth It?"
Yes, yes, sometimes it would. And maybe more than just one.
A couple of days ago I had an epiphany. I was probably late to the game.
The epiphany was, gun reform is going nowhere.
It came to me as I was riding my bike, which is when I do some of my thinking, and it struck me that I wasn’t thinking any more about the school slaughter two weeks ago in Texas, or the massacre ten days before that in Buffalo, or any of the other gun violence before or since. For the record, there have been twenty more mass shootings just since Uvalde.
What I realized was, already my mind had moved on. The public hearings of the January 6th committee were finally coming up, the war in Ukraine was taking a turn for the worse, the Republican assault on honest elections was gaining steam, and inflation and the stock market both were going in the wrong direction.
What I realized was, the shock after last month’s shootings was going the way of the shock after Sandy Hook. “I know there’s not a parent in America who doesn’t feel the same overwhelming grief that I do,” President Obama accurately observed on that dreadful day almost ten years ago when a 20-year-old man killed 20 little kids (and six adults) at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut. “As a country,” he went on, “we have been through this too many times. We’re going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics.”
I remember hearing that and thinking, “Yes we have, maybe we will.”
We haven’t, and we won’t.
That was hammered home by a vote the day before yesterday in the House of Representatives. It was on the “Federal Extreme Risk Protection Order Act,” one of the seven separate bills advanced by Democrats to make it harder for murderers to get their hands on guns. This one, specifically, was for a “red flag” law that would give police the power to confiscate guns if they can cite credible claims before a federal judge that those who possess them pose a danger to themselves or others.
It won, but with only five Republican votes. It was considered the most likely of all seven House proposals to pass, but only five Republicans got behind it, and the reason is revealing: of those five, four had gotten on the wrong side of Donald Trump and, facing the fury of his followers, made the difficult decision not to run for re-election.
So they could vote their conscience, not their commission.
Here’s who they are, and why they dropped out: Representative Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio had the gall to vote for Donald Trump’s second impeachment which led to threats against him and his wife and his children. Representative Fred Upton of Michigan had voted against Trump too, and evidently an equal sin, he’d voted for President Biden’s infrastructure bill, after which one caller’s message said, “I hope you die, I hope everybody in your f***ing family dies.” We know about Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, who got on board as the only Republican to join Liz Cheney on the January 6th Committee, which put an end to his chance for reelection. Representative Chris Jacobs of New York faced what he considered an insurmountable backlash after the massacre in Buffalo when he broke ranks with his party and voted for a ban on semiautomatic rifles and a new minimum age of 18 to purchase firearms.
If Trump will turn on his own daughter as he did yesterday after her acknowledgement was made public that Joe Biden won the election fair and square, there is no limit to how low he will stoop to savage others.
For six years, between long stints at two television networks as a correspondent, I was a talk show host at KOA Radio, the 50,000 watt station in Denver. With five shows a week, I debated on every controversy under the sun. And on almost every issue, I thought I understood where the other side was coming from. Those who would ban abortion believe the practice amounts to murder. Those who would put religion in government believe the Constitution condones it. Those who oppose gay rights believe the Bible (parts of which of course they conveniently ignore) says it’s immoral. In every case I ardently disagreed, but saw how they came to the principles they promoted.
Not so, on guns.
Many who oppose even the most moderate reforms are driven by an irrational and illogical set of fears. They argue either that they need guns in their homes to ward off predators, or to stave off a government that’s coming to get them, which carries its own dose of irony since on January 6th last year, many who make that case were coming to get the government.
Their arguments also are inaccurate. The journal Scientific American focuses on everything from health and technology to the mind and space, but not politics. But two days after Uvalde, it published a piece that puts the lie to the logic that we’re safer with more guns, not less. “By 2020,” it said, “about eight in every 100,000 people died of car crashes. About 10 in every 100,000 people died of gun injuries.” Then it quoted a study comparing gun deaths in the U.S. to nations in Asia and Europe: “Our homicide rate in teens and young adults is 49 times higher. Our firearm suicide rate is eight times higher.” It cited research from the Harvard School of Public Health: “States with higher gun ownership levels have higher rates of homicide.” The most telling statistics came from here at home: “Assaults with a firearm were 6.8 times more common in states that had the most guns, compared to the least. More than a dozen studies have revealed that if you had a gun at home, you were twice as likely to be killed as someone who didn’t.”
And yet, gun reform is going nowhere.
Ohio Representative Jim Jordan, one of Donald Trump’s most incendiary acolytes, wrote that the “Protecting Our Kids Act,” which would address everything from safe storage of firearms, to making them traceable, to a purchaser’s age— the killers in both Buffalo and Uvalde were only 18— “would place significant burdens on Americans’ Second Amendment rights while failing to meaningfully prevent gun violence or to improve public safety.”
That’s hogwash. The 18th-Century Second Amendment never was meant to provide the protections it provides today. There is no good argument against measures that would make modern weapons of war harder for hell-bent civilian warriors to get. The best way to keep guns out of the hands of mass murderers is to make it harder for them to get those guns. Period.
Back during that interval as a radio talk show host, I occasionally was paired for debates against the house conservative at the station, and when gun reform measures came up, you could choke on his cynicism when he delivered his favorite line: “If only it would save one life, wouldn’t it be worth it?”
My patent answer was, “Sometimes, yes, yes it would.” Because measures to make it harder to get guns and ammunition— especially guns and ammunition that can mow down dozens of innocents in a single volley— would save some lives. Maybe many lives. Certainly not all, but some. Measures on the table right now would not confiscate law-abiding owners’ guns. They would just mean it takes longer to get more, and require protections to keep them out of the wrong hands.
So yes, it would be worth it. If only more Republicans had the guts to vote their conscience and make it happen
Over almost five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks including ABC News, a political columnist for The Denver Post and syndicated columnist for Scripps newspapers, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including one about the life of a foreign correspondent called “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He has covered presidencies and politics at home and international crises around the globe, from Afghanistan to South Africa, from Iran to Egypt, from the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia, from Nicaragua to Namibia, from Vietnam to Venezuela, from Libya to Liberia, from Panama to Poland. Dobbs has won three Emmys, and the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists..
Well presented, Gregg. Alas, it is clear that if the 'Swamp Creatures' can't see their way clear to agree to start on the easiest, and basic, measures to protect our children (Red Flag, Age, More complete backround checks) and are concerned only with their own power and position, there is no hope for them.
Excellent essay Greg
Thanks