From Sunday morning until late last night, I spent my time in a vortex of pessimism.
Why? Because despite the media’s assurances, it seemed as though the massacre in Orlando had not “shocked the nation.” Rather, it seemed as though we, as a society, barely looked up from our breakfast cereal to acknowledge the tragedy. As always, we offered our thoughts and prayers, and then went to our respective corners and came out demagoguing. The Left added the cry for an assault weapons ban to their litany, and the Right responded with a full-throated chorus of “From my cold, dead hands”. The progressives blamed the NRA. The conservatives blamed the president. The president wept. Everyone talked. No one listened.
Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
And I lost all hope. I entered a state of despair.
I tried to understand why nothing ever changed, and the only logical reason I could think of, the only plausible reason we can’t pass common sense gun laws, the substance of which a majority of Americans, a majority of Republicans, a majority of gun owners, and a majority of NRA members agree upon, the reason we can’t pass these laws was because we, as a society, simply don’t care enough.
We don’t care enough about the dead to force our lawmakers to act. We care more about our guns, about our entrenched rhetoric, or about our own safe, complacent, unperturbed, privileged lives to overcome our mutual dislike and distrust and do the hard work of passing laws that, while they will not solve the problem, at least make getting a gun more difficult for the people whom we all agree should not have any weapons. As citizens, we don’t even care enough to vote out the lawmakers who refuse to listen to their constituents and side instead with a vocal, moneyed, well-armed, and increasingly fringe gun-rights lobby.
And then something different happened.
Yesterday, Senator Christopher Murphy (D-Conn) took the floor and refused to give it up. Armed with a burning passion, a rising anger, and the hashtags #HoldTheFloor, #Filibuster, and #Enough, Senator Murphy took the floor and challenged his colleagues to work on a compromise and bring two amendments to the floor for a vote: one to close the gun-show loophole and require universal background checks on all sales of firearms, and one that allows law enforcement to include in those background checks individuals who are on the “no-fly” or terrorist watch list.
Last night, I found a link and was able to watch the filibuster, live. It was in its fourteenth hour. Senator Murphy’s voice was ragged and gravelly, but his determination was still clear. He spoke about the art of compromise, and about who he was there to represent, i.e., his constituents and not moneyed interests. After a while, he yielded for a question, and Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ), looking fresh in comparison, took the floor.
Senator Booker’s “question” was preambled by a laudatory admiration of Murphy’s position and strength, a reiteration of the events of the day, and a castigation toward himself and his colleagues should they fail to act. Then, about fifteen minutes into his preamble, Senator Booker stated exactly what I’d been feeling all week. (You can find it at 15:36:00 in the CSpan coverage.)
“There is a privilege in this country that is a dangerous type of privilege. It’s the type of privilege that says…if a problem is not happening to me personally, then it’s not a problem…when that’s contrary to what we say about ourselves as a country. The spirit of this country has always been that we are all in this together, that we all do better when we all do better, that if there is injustice in our midst affecting another family, another state, another neighborhood, that injustice threatens the whole.” — Senator Cory Booker
And suddenly, I began to feel hopeful once more.
I was no longer alone in my despair and frustration. I heard it in the voice and words of senators, passionately urging each other to come to the table and talk, to heed the voices of their constituents, to do more than join in a moment of silence filled with thoughts and prayers, and to consider legislation that makes so much sense that not to pass it is, in truth, a lapse in our moral duty as citizens of a common society.
I sincerely thank the dozens of senators (including two Republicans) who took the floor yesterday to say “Enough is enough” and worked with their colleagues to reach a compromise on bringing these two common-sense gun control amendments to the floor for a vote.
The substance of these amendments, the limits they entail, will not solve all our gun violence woes. They will make it harder for the next person who is intent on slaughter, though, and that’s a step on which the majority of us can agree.
We all do better when we all do better.
k
I spent much of the past couple of days watching the dramatic sit-in on the floor of the House of Representatives, June 22nd and 23rd. Something does feel different this time — it is a turning point — a water mark — something has to happen. I was in high school when Martin Luther King died — it feels like that — we shall overcome, some day.
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I feel as if the tide is indeed turning this time. Unfortunately, I fear that it may take a few more massacres before the public has had #Enough, but the trend is positive.
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Oh, Kurt, you said this better than I did, but I just posted about this same concept on Facebook yesterday . . . that *something* feels different this time.
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Yes, I saw your post and was going to link you to this, but didn’t want to intrude upon your discussions with my own. It doesn’t feel like we’re approaching a tipping point on the issue. I just hope it doesn’t take another massacre to get the ball rolling.
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Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.
Last time I tried to kill a man with my bare hands, I found it wasn’t as easy as all that. So I gave up. Now I’m best friends with the cad. (Do you detect a minuscule anti-gun morale in my aphorism?)
Kurt, I was thinking about you the other day. Uncanny that you stopped by!
What have you been up to?
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Guns don’t kill people. People kill people. People with guns kill a lot more people than people without guns.
There…I’m done. 😉
What have I been up to? Fostering a young person during a trying transition in her life. Engaging in an abortive attempt at a career change. Burying parents. Unsuccessfully marketing a short story. Wondering what in the hell happened to my country, politically, socially, etc. Trying not to get amazingly depressed.
However, next week is my wife’s Birthday Week and I too time off work to take here wherever she wants to do whatever she wants. No decisions for me for 9 days. Yay!
Someday, I’ll get back to that novel-in-progress…
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Thanks for the update, Kurt. I appreciate it.
A nine-day hiatus sounds like something the doctor would order (if she were caught out and couldn’t think of any drugs to prescribe, naturally).
Enjoy the break. The same problems will be there to greet you when you return, but they may seem a trifle less daunting.
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Thanks for the informative post, Kurt! We’re currently in a spot where we’re only getting one channel (NBC), so limited coverage. I’d been very pro-gun control for most of my life; then a few things happened that were significant enough in my life (yes, it all does boil down to how something touches us personally) that I reconsidered my position.
What I’ve realized is that it’s not an easy, yes or no question. It isn’t about whether someone is for gun laws or against them, though that’s the simplistic choice the politicians and media have boiled it down to.
The question shouldn’t be whether to allow guns (too late to ban them any way) or whether there should be any laws at all (duh). The question is WHICH laws make sense, and which don’t.
I often carry a gun (I have a permit for most of the US), something I never thought I’d do many years ago, and I feel less afraid in many situations than I used to.
I’m also a lot more informed about guns than I once was. “Assault rifle” and “automatic rifle” are not interchangeable terms. Automatic rifles are NOT legal. You cannot purchase them at gun shows.
This is a long response — I apologize. What I really want to say is that no sensible gun owner (or gun rights advocate) has a good reason to deny people on a terrorist watch list access to firearms. Requiring background checks at gun show sales is also a much-needed reform.
I’m a law-abiding, tax-paying Democrat. There’s no black-and-white here. It’s a fuzzy gray space we shouldn’t try to simplify or ignore.
I’ll get off the soapbox now. Thanks for scooting over to let me have a say.
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It definitely is a grey area, with no easy answers.
I’m puzzled by part of your comment, though…
“…No sensible [person] has a good reason to deny people on a terrorist watch list access to firearms.”
They don’t? You don’t think it’s reasonable to deny persons on the watch list(s) access to firearms?
Most people agree that there are people who we do not want to own guns, so we’re just arguing over who can and who can’t.
Most people also agree that there are weapons to which the public should not have access, so we’re just arguing over which weapons are off-limits.
Most of the noise in this debate comes from the edges, the “All guns for All people” vs the “No guns for No people” fringes. There’s so much common ground that we ignore; if we could only put on blinkers, ignore the fringes, and concentrate on the commonalities, we might be able to make some progress.
k
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Thanks for pointing out the confusion in my statement about those on the terrorist watch list. Nobody on the terrorist watch list should be allowed to purchase a firearm. There are all kinds of reasons people get denied approval for purchase — this one seems obvious.
I completely agree the argument should be about the gray area, but too often it isn’t. The fact remains that illegal firearm sales — of all kinds of weapons — is a HUGE black market in this country. Figuring out how to disarm the bad guys is where I’d rather see our energy go….
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Do you think those amendments will pass? I hope so, but …
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I don’t know. Discussing this with another friend, I remarked at how sad it was that just allowing the Dems to bring it to a vote was cause for hope, without any promise of passage. But, that that is, is… If it doesn’t pass, it will likely be close to a party-line split, which will be another strike against the GOP.
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I heard they’re voting on the amendments this Monday.
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