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HOW TRUE. This political cartoon by John Branch is more than 20 years old.
Reposted by permission from John Branch. For more of his political cartoons go to www.branchtoons.com
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GUEST BLOG—By
Trymaine Lee, a national reporter for MSNBC and a New America fellow. He is the
author of the forthcoming book, “Million Dollar Bullets.” Follow him on
Twitter.
With around 300 million guns in
America, there are almost as many guns in this country as there are Americans.
And despite the carnage and chaos they routinely cause— in the form of mass
shootings, urban gun violence, domestic violence and suicides— we have yet to
witness the political will or courage to do anything to stanch the bleeding.
In 2013
alone there were more than 11,000 homicides and nearly 22,000 suicides
committed with guns. Those are just the dead. More than 84,000 people were
injured by gunfire, many of them left with catastrophic and debilitating
injuries.
The vast
costs of gun violence can be tallied in more than just physical injury and
death, casting a long shadow of emotional and psychological trauma experienced
by those repeatedly exposed to it— whether they are physical victims or not.
There are also great financial costs, both direct and indirect dollar amounts
that figure to the tune of upward of $200 billion a year, according to both the
University of Chicago Crime Lab and the Pacific Institute for Research and
Evaluation.
Yet, even as
the blood and bullets continue to flow through our streets, Congress (and many
state legislatures) has failed to pass a single piece of legislation for robust
gun-control. Not for bolstered background checks for gun sales, despite polling
that shows a wide majority of Americans, including gun owners, support. Nor for
stricter state-level reforms that have led to major drops in gun-violence in
states that have adopted such measures. This, despite the reality that the data
is striking on that point. States with looser gun laws experience higher rates
of gun death rates. Period.
Congress has
virtually barred the Center for Disease Control from engaging in the kind of
research into gun violence that we offer into other major killers of Americans
like car accidents and all manner of cancer, by starving it of funding
dedicated to studying it.
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| Trymaine Lee |
It’s as if
we’re living in a sort of Twilight Zone of political theater that has made
keeping a check on America’s lust for guns, and the violence they bear,
virtually impossible.
But perhaps,
in the first few days of 2016, we exited stage left.
This week,
the Obama administration overcame political daggers and posturing to present a
series of executive actions that some in the anti-gun violence community say
are the biggest strides since the passing of the Brady Bill more than two
decades ago.
President
Obama announced a series of executive actions that the White House has billed
as the president’s best efforts in the face of an unmovable Congress.
The
president’s executive actions, which differ from executive orders which become
law upon signing, include a 10-point plan aimed at keeping guns from people who
shouldn’t have them. The plan includes hiring 230 new FBI examiners to process
background checks, making the national background check system a 24-hour,
7-day-a-week operation. There’s also a request for $500 million in
congressional funding for mental health care, and new direction for federal
agencies to expand their research into smart gun technology.
It’s as if
we’re living in a sort of Twilight Zone of political theater that has made
keeping a check on America’s lust for guns, and the violence they bear,
virtually impossible.
But the
heart of the new guidelines is a clarification as to who is “engaged in the
business” of selling guns and thus, who is required to get a federal license
and conduct a background check for all gun sales. That effort is aimed at the
so-called “gun show loophole,” which allows people who sell from their “private
collections” to sell guns without a license or a background check. That
loophole has allowed gun traffickers and people supplying guns for all types of
nefarious purposes unfettered distribution, all out of the purview of federal
authorities.
The new
guidelines, then, offer new scrutiny over those who sell a volume of weapons
but don’t operate out of a brick and mortar store—that is, over people who sell
their “private collections” at gun shows and internet gun sellers. In a recent
report by the anti-gun violence group Everytown for Gun Safety, just a handful
of unlicensed high-volume gun sellers on the largest online market for
unlicensed gun sales, Armslist.com, posted more than 30,000 gun ads — all
without the requirement of a background check or other safeguards required by
licensed dealers.
While the
administration allows that the new guidance does not directly upend the
universe of gun violence, these are steps in the right direction.
With tears
rolling down his cheek, President Obama, in his announcement, made an emotional
plea to the nation to stand up against the all-powerful gun lobby and the
politicians situated in their deep pockets.
“The gun
lobby may be holding Congress hostage right now but they can’t hold America
hostage. We do not have to accept that carnage is the price of freedom,” Obama
said from the East Room of the White House on Tuesday. “Congress still needs to
act. The folks in this room will not rest until Congress does.
“The reason
Congress blocks laws is because they want to win elections,” he said. “If you
make it hard for them to win an election if they block those laws, they’ll
change course, I promise.”
Flanked by
victims of gun violence and the families of loved ones who’ve been taken by
guns and bullets, Obama was visibly shaken. He referenced the 20 young children
slaughtered at Sandy Hook Elementary. And with his voice at times halting with
emotion, he recalled the heroic recent death of a Tennessee teen who took a
bullet to the head after leaping between a hail of bullets and three young
female friends.
Obama talked
about the 30,000 or so lives typically lost each year to guns, noting those
killed each day on the streets of his hometown of Chicago.
“Every time
I think about those kids it gets me mad,” he said of the children of Sandy Hook
Elementary. “And by the way, it happens on the streets of Chicago every day.”
Unfortunately,
without the support of Congress and strong action by it, these measures will
not have a tremendous impact on gun violence or access to guns by violent
people.
The rare
show of emotion by the president may have moved some hearts already wrenching
under the weight of the unending drumbeat of gun violence in our country. Yet,
the response from Obama’s detractors was expectedly vitriolic.
Republican
presidential candidates laid into Obama. Gov. Chris Christie called Obama a
“petulant child.”
Jeb Bush
said he will “fight as hard as I can against any effort by this president, or
by any liberal that wants to take away people’s rights that are embedded in the
Bill of Rights, embedded in our Constitution. Sen. Ted Cruz saying if he
becomes president he’d wipe out the plan, said, “If you live by the pen you die
by the pen, and my pen has got an eraser.”
And the
National Rifle Association, in a bit of snark, jabbed at the proposal in an
interview with the New York Times.
“This is it,
really?” Jennifer Baker, the NRA’s director of public affairs, told The New
York Times. “This is what they’ve been hyping for how long now? This is the
proposal they’ve spent seven years putting together? They’re not really doing
anything.”
In a
perverted kind of way, the NRA spokeswoman is right. Unfortunately, without the
support of Congress and strong action by it, these measures will not have a
tremendous impact on gun violence or access to guns by violent people. But the
hoping, hand-wringing and talk go far beyond the presidency of Barack Obama.
It’s a bi-partisan burden that has left America holding the bag— the body bag.
Each day in
America, about 92 people die by the gun. They’re dying in church houses and
schoolhouses, street corners and the movie theaters. We are living, and they
are dying, by the gun. Unlike Cruz’s pen, it does not have an eraser. And we
should all be mad that there is not more being done to stop the bleeding.
And then we
should do more than be mad. We should do something about it.
**New America, formerly
the New America Foundation, is a non-partisan think tank in the United States. It focuses on a range of public policy issues,
including national security studies, technology, asset building, health,
gender, energy, education, and the economy. The organization is based in
Washington, D.C., with additional offices in New York City. www.NewAmerica.net
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