Staff File Photo by Dan HenryHere we go again.
Another mass shooting. Maybe linked to international terrorism. Maybe not. Maybe a mix of radicalized domestic terrorism and workplace violence. Certainly senseless death. Certainly shock and confusion and national mourning.
San Bernardino’s shooting on Wednesday, leaving 14 people dead and 21 injured, was the 355th mass shooting of the year, according to The Washington Post – as of the 336th day of the year.
What’s so shocking is how commonplace this has become. So commonplace that there were two mass shootings on Wednesday and most of us didn’t even know about the other one right in our neighboring state of Georgia. In Savannah, a gunman shot four people early Wednesday, killing a woman and injuring three men.
“The local media barely acknowledged the murder: One local television station covered it in three paragraphs. And the world spun on,” The Washington Post wrote in its Wonkblog.
No doubt, the National Rifle Association leaders are in their offices today giving each other high fives.
And why not? A week ago, the Planned Parenthood mass shooting sent Americans to gun stores in record numbers: More Americans had their backgrounds checked purchasing guns on Black Friday than any day on record, according to data released by the FBI this week. The National Instant Criminal Background Check System processed 185,345 requests on Nov. 27.
And as first one politician after another took to Twitter to offer their “thoughts and prayers,” ThinkProgress, a liberal blog, tallied those politicians’ NRA-donated campaign dollars.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., tweeted: The senseless loss of innocent life in #SanBernardino defies explanation. Our thoughts are w/ the victims & their families.”
Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., tweeted: “Our nation mourns for the #SanBernardino community. Praying for peace for the state of California and for safety for the first responders.”
Their thoughts and prayers – paid for by the NRA – are covered in blood.
The NRA dumped $922,000 into McConnell’s re-election bid, and Scalise got $7,450 to cover his “praying.”
They were just two of scores of Congress members the NRA – collectively – spent $30.6 million in 2014 to buy.
And it has worked. Even as poll after poll shows popular support among Americans for universal background checks for gun buyers as well as bans on assault-style weapons, any attempt to pass even commonsense reforms is shot dead by the “no” votes of this Republican majority Congress. Instead they vote for all the bills pushed by the NRA – bills that have systematically demolished what little control there is – like gun-free parks and churches.
You may even recall that less than a month ago in the wake of the Paris attacks, NRA opposed a bill that would keep guns out of the hands of people on our terrorist watchlist – people already on a federal no-fly list. NRA, funded now almost entirely by gun makers, can’t be for anything that might stop or even slow a gun sale.
The Denying Firearms and Explosives to Dangerous Terrorists Act was first proposed in 2007 by the Bush administration and introduced in Congress two years later. While the bill languished, more than 2,000 suspects on the FBI’s Terrorist Watchlist bought weapons in the U.S., according to the federal Government Accountability Office. In fact, the GAO reported that 91 percent of all suspected terrorists who tried to buy guns in America walked away with the weapon they wanted.
Even the past week’s bullet-ridden events didn’t turn congressional heads away from the millions pushed on them from the NRA (which a friend suggests should itself be put on a federal subversive organization watch list).
During most of Thursday, the morning after our nation’s latest bloody mass shooting – and one tinged with “radicalized” terrorism – the Senate busily debated the repeal or gutting of Obamacare. Again.
Finally, at 4:29 p.m., the Senate began voting on a Dianne Feinstein, D-Ca., motion to waive the budget act in relation to her amendment #2910 – to ban the sale of firearms and explosives to individuals on the terrorist watch list.
Astonishingly, the NRA won again. The vote was no, 45-54.
So, congressmen and congresswomen: Save your thoughts and prayers.
And wash your bloody hands.