Opinion
Ready to Nag About Gun Control?
A pandemic makes weapons worse.
Gail
Collins
By Gail
Collins
Opinion
Columnist
Feb. 24,
2021
You may be
wondering how we’re doing on gun control.
Joe Biden
promised to tackle it on “my first day in office,” which he didn’t. Give the
man a break — he’s got to get his Covid relief bill through Congress, and you
can appreciate that he’s rather distracted. But absolutely no reason we
shouldn’t start to nag.
We’ve been
hearing a lot about the gun debate in Washington lately, but it’s mostly on the
weirdo side. Who can forget the virtual House committee meeting during which
Republican Lauren Boebert sat with a pile of large firearms behind her? This
was in a session on a proposal to stop members from bringing their guns to
committee meetings, so you’d have to admit she was on topic.
We will
pause while you ask: When did our lawmakers start bringing guns to the office?
Isn’t that sort of … 19th century?
Well, yeah,
but it still goes on. Members of Congress can keep guns in their offices and
carry them unloaded pretty much anywhere on the Capitol grounds, except the
House or Senate floor. Last month Representative Andy Harris, a Republican,
reportedly approached the House chamber while packing heat. When he was
stopped, Harris tried to palm the gun off on a colleague, who sensibly declined
the gift.
On the plus
side, extremely optimistic citizens might have taken heart when Representative
Marjorie Taylor Greene, one of the fiercest/craziest gun control opponents,
recently attempted to boost her credibility by announcing she now believes mass
school shootings and the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center actually did
happen.
Progress!
Meanwhile, in her spare time, Greene has introduced a bill to make it illegal
for the federal government to spend money on gun control enforcement.
If there
was ever a time to pick up the gun safety battle it would be now. The pandemic,
which has made just about everything worse except soap sales, has turned a
whole lot of Americans into tortured souls. “No matter how you look at it, gun
violence is an epidemic within this pandemic,” said John Feinblatt, president
of Everytown for Gun Safety.
The folks
at Everytown estimated that 22 million guns were sold in 2020, up 64 percent
from 2019. And given the fact that there are more than 390 million guns in
private hands, you will not be startled to learn that a lot have been going
off.
You hear
stories every day. Domestic violence, little kids accidentally shooting
themselves with the gun Dad keeps in the bedroom. (Unintentional shooting
deaths by children rose more than 30 percent in March-May 2020 compared with
the same period in the years before.)
There are
so many ungodly cases you really have to do something unique to get attention.
Recently in Pennsylvania, three people were fatally shot in a fight over snow
shoveling.
Two F.B.I.
agents trying to execute a search warrant in a child pornography investigation
were killed by the suspect, who happened to have an assault rifle on hand.
Perhaps you remember assault rifles. They’re the rapid-fire, military-style
guns — extremely efficient for a mass shooting — that Congress refuses to ban.
Or now, anyhow. Back in 1994, it prohibited the manufacture of semiautomatic
assault weapons, under the leadership of Senate Judiciary Committee chairman
Joe Biden.
The ban,
alas, included a 10-year expiration date, a compromise to placate the
ever-popular Tiny Group Of Swing Votes In The Senate. Nothing could get our nation’s
leaders to bring it back, even a mass shooting of six educators and 20 children
at Sandy Hook Elementary.
There’s not
much doubt Biden is eager to get some serious reform underway. “His heart is on
his sleeve when it comes to this,” said Senator Richard Blumenthal of
Connecticut. Sadly, there often seems to be a gap between the issues Biden
really, really cares about and the ones he’s actually going to do something
about. But even if he charges ahead, there’s only so much he can do by
executive order, and whatever it is won’t have the staying power of real
legislation.
If we’re
lucky, sometime this year a gun bill — at least a modest one toughening up
background checks — will make it to the Senate. In between paeans to the Second
Amendment, opponents will tell the nation that their constituents want to have
weapons on hand to defend themselves and their families from evildoers.
You do
wonder how the founding fathers would have felt about the right to bear arms if
they knew their nastiest neighbor had just installed a printer that
manufactures guns in his basement.
The stories
about how a Gun Saved The Day aren’t generally all that convincing. The
Heritage Foundation recently ran a list of 11 incidents in which “a gun stopped
matters from getting worse.” One case involved a robber who threatened
employees at a pizza restaurant in Georgia. The workers won the day by grabbing
another gun and catching him off-guard. It was indeed good news. But the fact
that the workers were able to get the gun because the holdup man decided to use
the restaurant bathroom before leaving with the money was … kind of a help.
One problem
with our gun debate is that it has the wrong starting point. Let’s raise the
bar. Demand that nobody be able to purchase a gun without passing a test
demonstrating she knows how to aim it. You’d be astonished at how many
enthusiastic owners that would eliminate from contention.
Gail
Collins is an Op-Ed columnist and a former member of the editorial board, and
was the first woman to serve as the Times editorial page editor, from 2001 to
2007. @GailCollins • Facebook
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