Why gun control is doomed [View all]

[damnedifIknow]

NO NEW laws restricting access to guns will be passed as a result of Wednesday’s racist shooting rampage, which left nine dead at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Americans can be confident this is true for several reasons. For starters, Barack Obama more or less admitted it.

Americans need to reckon with the fact that other advanced countries do not have to face this sort of mass violence, the president said in a sombre statement at the White House on Thursday. “It is in our power to do something about it. I say that recognising the politics in this town foreclose a lot of the avenues just now. But it would be wrong for us not to acknowledge it,” he said, with visible frustration.

The president knows that if it were politically possible to pass new gun laws in Washington, it would have happened after the December 2012 massacre in Newtown, Connecticut. It is hard to imagine a tragedy more calculated to shock American consciences: 20 small children and six staff were gunned down in their elementary school in a quaint New England community by a disturbed young man, wielding a rifle from his mother’s gun collection. Various marginal tweaks to gun laws were tried and failed to gain traction in Congress. Finally, a bipartisan push was made to merely enforce existing laws better. This would have expanded the number of gun-buyers checked for histories of crime or severe mental illness. It failed, too."

Americans can be confident that South Carolina is not about to pass new gun laws, either. For evidence, they can start by contemplating this photograph, tweeted out by a local reporter:

Political awkward moment: Gov. Haley, Sen. Scott, AG Wilson sit during standing ovation after a call for gun control pic.twitter.com/gsb5VIhmZa— Andy Shain (@AndyShain) June 18, 2015

It shows the standing ovation that followed a call for gun controls at a vigil on Thursday, during which two Republican leaders remained seated, hands in their laps: Governor Nikki Haley and Senator Tim Scott."

*But to best understand why gun laws in this country are not about to change, one must also recognise the disproportionate power of the gun lobby. The NRA rallies supporters with a masterful use of fear and distrust of government, and intimidates Republican politicians by turning support for gun rights into a defining test of conservative values. The group consistently and successfully diverts attention away from guns to mental illness."

http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2015/06/charleston-and-public-polic