Gun Culture

Yet another shooting snuffed out the lives of 19 children and two teachers in an elementary school classroom in Uvalde, Texas in the span of just 10 days after a similar shooting had killed 10 people in a supermarket in Buffalo, New York 14 May. Once again it is a mass killing by a teenager – an 18-year-old.
The recent school shooting has, predictably enough, triggered fresh calls for action on gun control. Each time such mass murder takes place in the US, the same demand is made with anti-gun activists raising the pitch of their chorus for rigorous control of sale of guns knowing fully well that the gun-lobby continues to have a resonance in the hearts of an overwhelmingly large number of people in that country. This time as well, familiar obstacles will stand in the way of effecting any reform in the easy availability of guns in the US.

The Texas shooting has a chilling parallel to a similar mass murder by a young man who shot and killed 26 people, including 20 children, at Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut in 2012. The Sandy Hook shooting led to calls for national gun reform. At that time, President Barack Obama made an emotional plea for action. But efforts to advance gun-control legislation in the Congress were stalled.

Now, after the killing of 19 children and two adults in Uvalde, similar calls for action are being made from both politicians and activists. President Joe Biden has echoed Obama in clamouring for change. “Why are we willing to live with this carnage?” he said. “Why do we keep letting this happen? Where in God’s name is our backbone to have the courage to deal with it and stand up to the lobbies?”

It is a forceful and impassioned plea intended also to shame those who are opposed to any strict legislation preventing easy availability of guns. But, reality is Democrats control both chambers of the Congress and the presidency this time around. Yet efforts to pass new gun-control regulations are facing the same old roadblocks.
Following the Sandy Hook shooting, a majority of US senators supported passing legislation that stipulated expanded background checks for gun purchases. However, a mere simple majority is not enough for enacting such a legislation because of the US parliamentary procedure called the ‘filibuster’ which makes it mandatory to have a minimum of 60 votes in the 100-seat Senate to pass a legislation.

Today, only a handful of the 50 Republican senators appear open to new gun legislation. This means any new efforts in the direction of reforms in the sale of guns may meet a similar fate. Of course, this has not prevented the Democrats from considering new proposals for strict gun regulations. They are even expressing their readiness to work with the Republicans and find common ground on which the two sides can converge. However, Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer sought to remind the country of the harsh reality. He said there is only a “slim prospect, very slim, all too slim. We’ve been burnt so many times before.”

So far, the Republicans have shown readiness only to create a national database of school safety practices. The Democrats are engaging Republicans in a dialogue for doing more and a handful of Republicans have shown interest. Although recent polls indicate majority of Americans support such efforts, many Republican senators are from states with large pro-gun communities. It is noteworthy that the US has many Republican voters who are opposed to gun reform. The Republicans need the support of such voters to win primary elections. So, the harsh reality in the US is that unless and until sentiment changes among that constituency, Republicans are unlikely to go with the Democrats in any move to enact legislation to create obstacles to the easy purchase of guns.

But, the situation is not as bleak as it may appear. Though congressional efforts are mired in procedural wrangles, gun-control activists since 2015 made substantive progress in passing new laws at the state level. For example, in Connecticut, there was overwhelming support for reform from the communities yet to be reconciled to the brutality of the Sandy Hook attack. Other Democrat-controlled states like New York, Maryland and California passed their own legislation limiting magazine sizes and prohibiting the sale of certain types of firearms. In Vermont, Republican Governor Phil Scott changed his position and worked with Democrats to pass new legislation in the traditionally gun-friendly state in 2018 after a school-shooting plot was unearthed timely enough. He succeeded in having a law which raised the age to buy a firearm to 21, limited magazine sizes and made background checks mandatory. This antagonised his supporters on the Right. However, he could easily win re-election in 2018.

In spite of this, the US seems to be in a totally hopeless situation. Added to this is the recent news that former president Trump, after reading out the names of the Texas victims, has been filmed to have danced in joy.