(Dobbs) No Apologies, No Contrition, No Compromise. Just Thoughts And Prayers.
We've set a shameful record. And the year isn't even over yet.
You’d like to think that when right-wing politicians, in the wake of a mass murder, offer their “thoughts and prayers,” it would get us somewhere.
It has. With two more massacres on Sunday, more than 2,000 miles apart but both within the space of 90 minutes— one near Dallas where three adults and a toddler were shot dead, and one near Seattle where, in an apparent murder-suicide, five people died— it has gotten us to the highest number of mass murders in any year in America since 2006. And that’s not all. It has gotten us to a total toll from mass murders, where four or more victims die, of 197 (another 91 people in those shootings were injured). That’s a shameful record. And the year’s not even over yet.
The figures for mass shootings, where four or more people are shot but no more than three of them die, are even more shocking. The Gun Violence Archive, which keeps track of these things, says that as of yesterday, there were 630 mass shootings this year in America.
And the total number of deaths by gun? Just short of 40,000. Half of those were suicides, which doesn’t soften the blow, but even of those who were killed by a gun in someone else’s hand— which includes nearly 1,600 children— it averages out to about 60 deaths per day.
The director of the Center for the Study and Practice of Violence Reduction, Thomas Abt, calls the record “a tragic, shameful milestone that should— but probably will not— serve as a wake-up call.” The trouble is, the politicians who fight every form of gun reform refuse to be awakened. They choose to ignore Abt’s crystal-clear conclusion: “The rise in mass shootings is driven by many factors, but increasingly easy access to firearms is the primary cause.”
But despite all the states where any adult can waltz into a gun shop and waltz out with a semi-automatic AR-15, and states where anyone with a gun can pack it in public, there are rays of light, and one is in my own state of Colorado. Three weeks ago, after the state legislature passed a law requiring a three day wait between purchasing a firearm and actually taking possession, a federal judge turned down an appeal by a gun rights group to nullify the law. Citing statistics about the life-saving effect of waiting periods elsewhere, the judge agreed with Colorado’s attorney general who had argued, “The plain text of the Second Amendment covers the possession (‘keep’) and carrying (‘bear’) of arms. A waiting period affects neither right.” The judge also said that the potential lives saved by a three day waiting period outweigh the potential inconvenience to anyone who wants to buy a gun. At least for now, pending appeals, the law will stand.
There is another constitutional argument too. Just as the First Amendment does not entitle us to shout fire in a crowded theater, the Second Amendment does not entitle us to arm madmen. Yet the cowardice and intransigence of people who wear the Second Amendment like a bulletproof shield has led to just that.
Most of those mass murders, and most of the mass shootings, are not headline stories. Most don’t happen in a Walmart or an elementary school or a college dorm or a synagogue or a Luby’s cafeteria. Most— statistically, about two-thirds of them— happen in private homes.
That’s why it’s important to underscore that earlier figure because it lives under the radar: not even including suicides, guns kill about 60 people every day.
Shouldn’t someone do something about that?!? The sensible politicians fight for waiting periods and background checks and limits on the volume of ammunition we can buy and bans on assault rifles that serve no other purpose than to kill. The others? Once they deliver their platitudes about better programs for mental health, all they offer are thoughts and prayers. No apologies, no contrition, no compromise. Just thoughts and prayers.
If they didn’t have the backing of gun rights groups like the NRA, we could vote them out. We should not stop trying. Those are my thoughts and prayers.
Over more than 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 also co-authored a book about the seminal year for baby boomers, called “1969: Are You Still Listening?” He has covered presidencies, politics, and the U.S. space program at home, and wars, natural disasters, and other 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, the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, and as a 37-year resident of Colorado, a place in the Denver Press Club Hall of Fame.
AMEN!!
Great column. Malcolm Gladwell has a series of podcasts on guns that addresses some of this.