“NO LAW COULD HAVE PREVENTED BUFFALO AND UVALDE?” ARE YOU KIDDING?

After Buffalo and Uvalde, came the usual sound bites issued from the lips of feckless politicians:

“Our thoughts and prayers . . . “

“No law could have prevented this tragedy.”

“We’ve got to do something about mental health in this country.”

What it all boils down to is really this: “Shit happens and we’re going to do next to nothing about it.” Well, recently, Congress did do something. It passed a law, which a large majority of Republicans nevertheless opposed, that puts a band-aid on a sucking chest wound, a wound opened wider by the Supreme Court’s recent decision to further loosen restrictions on guns. One step forward, three backward. Sisyphus, we get it.

When Republicans say “no law could have prevented this,” they’re saying there are no laws currently on the books which could have prevented Buffalo and Uvalde. That is true because our gun laws are pathetically weak, insanely lenient, and obviously do not keep the public safe. Current laws are mostly designed to keep guns out of the hands of convicted felons and psychopaths, but thanks to a thriving black market in a nation with more guns than people, even they can get their hands on guns, including weapons of war. Politicians bought and paid for by the gun industry and the NRA want us to believe that laws regulating dangerous items can’t save lives. Well, what about automobiles and tobacco? It took time but health and safety laws, like those regulating automobiles and tobacco, eventually can change the culture and start saving lives. And it can work with guns. Just look at Australia. Nevertheless, Republicans respond that automobiles and tobacco have no Constitutional protection, and assert, in essence, that our founding fathers intended that just about anyone with a pulse should carry arms, even though they hadn’t a clue that the words they wrote in the Constitution would create the rapidly evolving dystopian society of gun violence which makes the USA the most dangerous industrialized nation on Earth today.

Republicans have the votes, thanks to the filibuster, to ensure that legislation which could substantially impact gun violence in America, including mass shootings, has about a snowball’s chance in hell of passage. Therefore, they quickly change the conversation to mental health; what they claim is the real solution to the problem. Mental health services are an important element, and I welcome any improvements, but states traditionally under-fund mental health, and despite pledges to increase funding, keep in mind that when state budgets get tight, mental health is one of the first places states look to cut spending. “In crisis, Republicans allegedly giveth, but when the crisis has passed, Republicans taketh it away.” Watch for it.

So, the thrust of the Republican response to Buffalo and Uvalde is “let’s bow our heads in prayer,” make a pledge to get guns out of the hands of the mentally ill, and move on with little or no change to the status quo. Yet any Republican lawmaker who went to law school and stayed awake in Con-law class is aware, way down deep in the dark, cobwebbed recesses of their minds where suppressed truths are stored away, is buried the knowledge that something can be done. The real problem for them is their haunting fear of being primaried by a Trump-endorsed, NRA-funded candidate and losing the seat in Congress they vacuously occupy. So, they bloviate fervently about the absolutism and original intent of the Second Amendment, despite it being written about 230 years ago when an infant nation, vulnerable to attack from all sides by the English, French, Spanish and Native Americans, did not have an Army to provide for its common defense, and their deadliest personal weapon was a musket. The militias James Madison had in mind were well-regulated patriots ready to defend the U.S. against foreign enemies and isolated domestic uprisings, not rag tag bunches of insurrectionists bent on staging a coup d’etat against their own government for the purpose of blocking the peaceful transfer of power and keeping the White House in the hands of a lawfully defeated President.

Incidentally, the drafters of the Constitution and Bill of Rights used the word “regulate” very sparingly; in fact, it appears in only three places, and only once in the Bill of Rights: in the Second Amendment. Deeply rooted in our history is the notion that rights proclaimed in the Bill of Rights are not absolute but are subject to reasonable regulation and interpretation, but that argument always seems to get lost when the subject is the Second Amendment.

Republicans have said that the tens of thousands of deaths each year from gun-related homicides, suicides, gun accidents and mass shootings are the “cost of freedom.” That is such a callous, unconscionable load of bovine crap! Do they really mean to say that these massive piles of dead bodies, many of them children, are the collateral damage from of having the “privilege” of living in country in which just about any adult civilian is virtually totally free to own and carry weapons of war and all other manner of firearms? If so, then may God help us.

Republicans, knowing there are enough desensitized Americans who will be thinking of other issues around election time, will nevertheless talk about other solutions to demonstrate their concern, like turning schools into fortresses and Special Forces training for teachers, all the while hoping they survive election day so they can go back to doing what they do best about gun violence – nothing.