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As usual, Charles Pierce says it best ....
WASHINGTON, D.C.—This was not a group you joined, not unless you had paid an incalculable price in blood and grief. On Monday evening, there were mothers and fathers and loved ones of people who were killed in mass shootings gathered in the lobby of the United States Senate just after the United States Senate had disgraced itself, and many of them were holding onto each other and weeping, and there didn't seem to be any point to wandering into their midst to gather quotes, and the question, "How do you feel about what happened today?" seemed obscenely trivial. So I stood on the fringes and watched these people and, for the first time in a very long time, got genuinely and deeply angry at a political event I was tasked to cover.
How many dead people are enough? How much blood on the floor is enough? How much brain matter on the walls is enough? Please. Give us an answer so these folks won't come and pester you until enough of your constituents and fellow citizens have been slaughtered to make it politically feasible for you to do something about the bloodletting. Give the country an answer so it won't bother you again until the bodies out in the countries pile high enough to be noticed from the top of Capitol Hill.
On Monday, there were four amendments to an appropriation bill presented to the Senate, two from Republicans and two from Democratic legislators. All of them were at least nominally directed at putting some sort of restrictions on the access that Americans have to deadly weapons. According to almost every legitimate poll, these restrictions are supported by in excess of 80 percent of the population. They are opposed primarily by one organization, the National Rifle Association, a front group for the weapons industry. Somehow, this is an argument within the Senate for the status quo. This was not an argument that prevailed outside in the Senate lobby, where people were weeping.
The restrictions proposed by Democratic citizens were simple ones.
If you are on the terror watch list, you can't buy a gun. If you choose to buy a gun, you should be subject to a more extensive background check. The Republicans, desperate to neutralize the issue in the wake of the Orlando shootings, cobbled together a couple of relatively toothless alternatives. The attorney-general could delay a gun purchase, but only for 72 hours. Someone on the watch-list could be denied a weapon, but they could take their case to court. All of them went down, but they were not voted down, per se. They were denied cloture, which means they couldn't be brought to a vote at all. If you're going to chicken out, run, don't walk.
"I was horrified," said Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, whose 15-hour filibuster last week forced any kind of vote at all, "But I wasn't surprised. We learned again that the NRA has a vice-grip on this place."
Goddamn, it was dispiriting. In 2012, Adam Lanza murdered 20 young children and six staff members at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut. That was the Teachable Moment. Nothing happened in response to it. Now, after 49 people were ventilated in an Orlando nightclub, it is another Teachable Moment. And, for the nonce, not only has nothing happened in response to it, but the debate has not moved an inch since the debate that ensued after the Sandy Hook massacre.
However, this time around, the Democrats have decided that the key to getting this battle out of the trenches and into the open field is Omar Mateen's vague connection to terrorism, even though that connection may well have been largely the product of Mateen's bat-ridden imagination. The Democrats seem to be hoping that, if they can use Mateen's delusions of terrorist grandeur to get what they want, then the country will be further protected against all the Adam Lanzas as well.
"The polling is overwhelming. People want it. And this is a perfect example of terrorism coming to the streets of America," said Senator Edward Markey of Massachusetts. "The terrorist didn't bring the gun from Fallujah or Aleppo. He bought the gun at a gun store in Florida. It helps that the American people understand that ISIS is encouraging people to attack us here in the United States. The challenge is for Democrats to link these weapons with the efforts of terrorists to attack us here, and it is a political challenge. The threat to American families is not what happens on the streets of Mosul. It's what happens on the streets of this country."
It is a very risky strategy.
In the first place, there now have been 15 years of propaganda to the effect that terrorism is something that happens Over There, perpetrated by The Other. Mass murder in this country, whether by Adam Lanza or Timothy McVeigh, is merely a larger-than-usual crime. (Let's pretend we care about mental illness! Let's talk about the frustration of the white working class!) Second, as we have seen since the massacre at Pulse, pinning the responsibility on Radical Islamic Terrorism—I said it! Is it gone yet?—is an old dog that still hunts. And, third, there are genuine civil liberty concerns regarding the proposed use of various government watch-lists—although witnessing members of the Party of Torture express their concerns for delicate constitutional guarantees was yet another nausea-inducing feature of Monday's events.
The soul of the nation was not in the Senate chamber on Monday. It could be found out in the lobby, where a group of people to whom an unspeakable evil was done at least in part because the instruments of that evil are so easily obtained. It was in their tears, and their anger, and in the fierceness of the embraces in which they enfolded Senator Chris Murphy, who has promised not to give up. It was creating a living memorial to all the dead, who do not count for enough yet, who are not yet a big enough constituency to affect the politics of the American government. The rest of us stood aside and let it unfold, hoping that the quiet determination would take the edge off our anger, but doubtful that it ever will.
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a46044/gun-control-senate-vote/
WASHINGTON, D.C.—This was not a group you joined, not unless you had paid an incalculable price in blood and grief. On Monday evening, there were mothers and fathers and loved ones of people who were killed in mass shootings gathered in the lobby of the United States Senate just after the United States Senate had disgraced itself, and many of them were holding onto each other and weeping, and there didn't seem to be any point to wandering into their midst to gather quotes, and the question, "How do you feel about what happened today?" seemed obscenely trivial. So I stood on the fringes and watched these people and, for the first time in a very long time, got genuinely and deeply angry at a political event I was tasked to cover.
How many dead people are enough? How much blood on the floor is enough? How much brain matter on the walls is enough? Please. Give us an answer so these folks won't come and pester you until enough of your constituents and fellow citizens have been slaughtered to make it politically feasible for you to do something about the bloodletting. Give the country an answer so it won't bother you again until the bodies out in the countries pile high enough to be noticed from the top of Capitol Hill.
On Monday, there were four amendments to an appropriation bill presented to the Senate, two from Republicans and two from Democratic legislators. All of them were at least nominally directed at putting some sort of restrictions on the access that Americans have to deadly weapons. According to almost every legitimate poll, these restrictions are supported by in excess of 80 percent of the population. They are opposed primarily by one organization, the National Rifle Association, a front group for the weapons industry. Somehow, this is an argument within the Senate for the status quo. This was not an argument that prevailed outside in the Senate lobby, where people were weeping.
The restrictions proposed by Democratic citizens were simple ones.
If you are on the terror watch list, you can't buy a gun. If you choose to buy a gun, you should be subject to a more extensive background check. The Republicans, desperate to neutralize the issue in the wake of the Orlando shootings, cobbled together a couple of relatively toothless alternatives. The attorney-general could delay a gun purchase, but only for 72 hours. Someone on the watch-list could be denied a weapon, but they could take their case to court. All of them went down, but they were not voted down, per se. They were denied cloture, which means they couldn't be brought to a vote at all. If you're going to chicken out, run, don't walk.
"I was horrified," said Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, whose 15-hour filibuster last week forced any kind of vote at all, "But I wasn't surprised. We learned again that the NRA has a vice-grip on this place."
Goddamn, it was dispiriting. In 2012, Adam Lanza murdered 20 young children and six staff members at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut. That was the Teachable Moment. Nothing happened in response to it. Now, after 49 people were ventilated in an Orlando nightclub, it is another Teachable Moment. And, for the nonce, not only has nothing happened in response to it, but the debate has not moved an inch since the debate that ensued after the Sandy Hook massacre.
However, this time around, the Democrats have decided that the key to getting this battle out of the trenches and into the open field is Omar Mateen's vague connection to terrorism, even though that connection may well have been largely the product of Mateen's bat-ridden imagination. The Democrats seem to be hoping that, if they can use Mateen's delusions of terrorist grandeur to get what they want, then the country will be further protected against all the Adam Lanzas as well.
"The polling is overwhelming. People want it. And this is a perfect example of terrorism coming to the streets of America," said Senator Edward Markey of Massachusetts. "The terrorist didn't bring the gun from Fallujah or Aleppo. He bought the gun at a gun store in Florida. It helps that the American people understand that ISIS is encouraging people to attack us here in the United States. The challenge is for Democrats to link these weapons with the efforts of terrorists to attack us here, and it is a political challenge. The threat to American families is not what happens on the streets of Mosul. It's what happens on the streets of this country."
It is a very risky strategy.
In the first place, there now have been 15 years of propaganda to the effect that terrorism is something that happens Over There, perpetrated by The Other. Mass murder in this country, whether by Adam Lanza or Timothy McVeigh, is merely a larger-than-usual crime. (Let's pretend we care about mental illness! Let's talk about the frustration of the white working class!) Second, as we have seen since the massacre at Pulse, pinning the responsibility on Radical Islamic Terrorism—I said it! Is it gone yet?—is an old dog that still hunts. And, third, there are genuine civil liberty concerns regarding the proposed use of various government watch-lists—although witnessing members of the Party of Torture express their concerns for delicate constitutional guarantees was yet another nausea-inducing feature of Monday's events.
The soul of the nation was not in the Senate chamber on Monday. It could be found out in the lobby, where a group of people to whom an unspeakable evil was done at least in part because the instruments of that evil are so easily obtained. It was in their tears, and their anger, and in the fierceness of the embraces in which they enfolded Senator Chris Murphy, who has promised not to give up. It was creating a living memorial to all the dead, who do not count for enough yet, who are not yet a big enough constituency to affect the politics of the American government. The rest of us stood aside and let it unfold, hoping that the quiet determination would take the edge off our anger, but doubtful that it ever will.
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a46044/gun-control-senate-vote/
