The Mass Murder Problem — Again

By Steven Jonas

Introductory note to the reader: Regular readers of my columns will know that I write on this subject on a fairly regular basis (see the note at the end of the column for a couple of examples), just as I do on racism. That is because just as this country is inflicted with institutional racism and has been since its beginnings, it has also been inflicted with gun violence for much of its existence. In its modern form, gun violence is underwritten for profit by the gun industry and its various components, and is politically protected by the Republican Party. In modern times there has been an ongoing epidemic of gun violence which, for example, resulted in a total of close to 40,000 deaths per year in 2018. Just under 60% of those deaths were suicides; the rest homicides. But of course the reason that I am going with this column again, updated a bit, is of course because of the two recent mass murders (and I do wish that they would be called “mass murders,” not “mass shootings”) that occurred just one week apart, in Atlanta, GA, and Boulder, CO.

The political responses to these tragedies have been sadly predictable. Ted Cruz’ (you know who he is, I’m sure) most quoted comment at a Senate hearing is that “they” (meaning those awful Democrats) “just want to take your guns away.” Nothing about the tragedies themselves, possible causes, possible remedies. Using the well-honed other Republican line of attack on even the mildest proposals to do something about the periodic slaughters, Sen. John Kennedy (LA) turned quickly to to changing the subject, this time around to drunk driving (about which there happens to be quite a bit of law, civil and criminal, which of course has no relationship to mass murder. But we shall leave that discussion for another time).

The Democrats, in the Senate at least, have been reduced to calling for “closing the background check loopholes” to cover private and gun show sales as well as reinstating the ban on assault rifles. Actually, in the Boulder case the weapon was apparently an assault pistol, made into a military-style assault rifle, the Ruger 556 (see the illustration above. Why anyone would need a weapon like that to hunt anything other than humans is a question for another time. As is the question of just how their manufacturers and sellers — all to make a profit — sleep at night.)

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Source: OpEdNews.com