After an 18-year-old killer massacred 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas on Tuesday, the New York Times geared up for another attempt at federal gun control, under the name of “gun safety,” even while admitting deep into its coverage that long-desired Democratic proposals would probably not have prevented the massacre.
Reporters Jonathan Weisman and Emily Cochrane lamented how the Democrats were doomed to fail to enact gun regulation.
Just shy of a decade after the Senate’s failure to respond to the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Democrats are again trying to transform outrage over the gun deaths of children into action by Congress to curb gun violence in America.
But with the Republican position more intractable than ever, calls for negotiations to find some response to the recent horrors in Uvalde, Texas, and Buffalo, N.Y., left few lawmakers with much hope that Congress would produce anything meaningful.
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According to polls, the proposal is supported by as much as 90% of Americans. This includes many G.O.P. It has been supported by voters but blocked by the Republicans for more than a decade. They are expressing the power of the gun rights issue for Republican base voters. Their passion for the 2nd Amendment makes it clear that any G.O.P. will be able to take their stance. Any lawmaker that supports even the most basic form of gun control is at risk of losing his job.
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As now, bipartisan legislation was possible back then, thanks to Senator Joe Manchin III (Democrat from West Virginia) and Patrick J. Toomey (Republican of Pennsylvania).Universal criminal background checks will be required for all gun purchasers, both at gun shows or online.….
However, would these measures have stopped the Uvalde shootings? This vital point will not be covered by the paper until it is too late. First there is Republican “individual liberty” to attack.
However, in the intervening decades, the partisan divisions between Republican-Democrats have only widened. They are now more divided on guns rights than on the wider question of how to strike a balance between individual liberty and collective responsibility. Republicans appear to believe that gun control and taxation are better than collective, societal responses in areas like climate change, pandemic safety, or taxation.
The reporter let their emotions run wild at the conclusion.
With a Senate threshold of 60 vote, however, odds are still good. It was not clear that Uvalde’s murderous children would change the opposition almost unanimously to any gun access restriction measure.
Asked what he would tell the parents of the slain children, Senator Tommy Tuberville, Republican of Alabama, told reporters, “I’m willing to say that I’m very sorry it happened. Okay, guns aren’t the problem. Problems are caused by people. That’s where it starts, and we’ve had guns forever. And we’re going to continue to have guns.”
Now comes the eye-opener.
The legislators talked over each otherIt was unclear that any discussion regarding the mass shootings of recent weeks would include any mention of this.….
Weisman and Cochrane questioned Republican ideas about more armed guards and red flaw laws but also Democratic “background check bills.” But the admission that more regulations may not solve thing was relegated to paragraph 36 out of 38.
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