The political game of chicken came off as expected in the United States Senate Monday night, as Republicans and Democrats mustered the votes to defeat the other’s gun bills.
Instead of taking time to craft a measure that might have a chance of passing and would include provisions to protect Second Amendment rights as well as to prevent the purchase of guns by people who shouldn’t have them, votes were held on bills that have been languishing in the chamber and were going nowhere. Indeed, the outcome was known before the votes.
The reactionary votes occurred in the wake of the June 12 Orlando mass shooting in which a terrorist proclaiming allegiance to the Islamic State killed 49 people before he was killed by police.
Sen. Patrick J. Toomey, R-Pa., asked the correct question of the Senate during the debate.
“Why aren’t we working on something that could actually get done?” he wondered.
Toomey’s right because none of the votes would have stopped Omar Mateen from his slaughter. One would have halted gun sales to anyone on the FBI’s watch lists, a place where Mateen once found himself. But he had been cleared and was no longer on those lists.
Despite the rhetoric that followed the event, the shooter used not an automatic weapon but a semi-automatic weapon of a type that has been around for a century. He bought his guns legally, which means through a system regulated by federal and state law, which means from a federally licensed vendor who must conduct a background check, which means the buyer verified in writing and under penalty of law information that was then checked against FBI records. And even after all that, the seller could have refused the sale for reasons including the buyer’s looks, behavior and demeanor.
On top of that, as a Philadelphia Inquirer commentary pointed out, Mateen also held a concealed-weapons license issued by the state of Florida, which, in turn, required fingerprints, a photograph, a Florida background check, firearm safety training and a five-day waiting period. And, of course, he also was a security officer employed by a private firm that has contracts with the Department of Homeland Security and presumably would have checked out his fitness for the job.
In truth, he was a gun control advocate’s worst nightmare. He did everything right until he did everything wrong.
Monday’s votes, in addition to preventing sales to anyone on the FBI’s watch lists, would have 1) allowed the attorney general (or a court order) to delay a gun purchase for up to 72 hours by a suspected terrorist or a person investigated as a terrorist in the last five years, 2) would have improved the National Criminal Instant Background Check System (NCIBCS) with more funding and encouraged the sharing of mental health records, and 3) expanded the background check system to include gun sales at gun shows and over the internet.
Democrats would have been politically smart to have passed the two less-demanding Republican bills – the delayed gun purchase and the NCIBCS funding – to show they had an interest in working across the aisle with the majority party on the issue. Then they would have had the political capital to spend on pushing their own bills and blaming the GOP when it didn’t work with them.
Frankly, all four of the laws make some sense, but all four have their flaws. The FBI lists alone have their errors (the late liberal lion, Sen. Edward Kennedy, once ended up on one), and don’t have judicial oversight. And the expanded background checks measure doesn’t take into account someone buying a gun for the use by someone else.
In fact, though, few if any of the gun control measures offered in answer to mass shootings in the last 15 to 20 years would have had any effect on the individual shooters. As columnist Thomas Sowell observed in Tuesday’s Times Free Press, “virtually all empirical studies in the United States show that tightening gun control laws has not reduced crime rates in general or murder rates in particular.”
Does that mean we should give up? Of course not.
But very few people in the United States would have us adopt Europe’s ban of civilians possessing firearms (and that didn’t work so well in Paris last November), and it would be difficult to confiscate some 300 million firearms already out there (almost all legally owned by law-abiding citizens).
Any real answer will take time, will have to have the far left and far right come out of their corners, will have to be made with the background of terrorism and will have to protect constitutional rights.
Can it be done? We believe it can, but neither side is willing to give enough at the moment to make it happen.