On Tuesday night – after a shooting at a school in Texas, which killed 19 children and two adults – this man was Steve Kerr, head coach of the Golden State Warriors of the NBA. He was openly emotional, angry and disappointed.
“When are we going to do something? Feel tired. I am so tired of getting up here and offering my condolences to the devastated families there. I was tired of the moments of silence. So I ask you, Mitch McConnell and all of you senators who refuse to do anything about violence and school shootings and supermarket shootings – I ask you if you will put your own desire for power before the life of our children and our elderly and our church people? Because that’s what it looks like. This is what we do every week. I’m sick. That’s enough for me. We can’t stand it. We can’t just sit here and read about it and tell us to ask for a moment. “
(For those who want to dismiss Kerr as just a basketball coach, it’s worth remembering that his father was shot and killed in 1984 at the American University of Beirut.) Kerr specifically mentions HR 8, a House bill that will expand past checks to include private arms sales and arms show sales. The measure was first passed by the House of Representatives in 2019 – eight Republicans joined 232 Democrats in voting for it – but there was no way in the Senate. He was re-introduced to the House of Representatives (and re-elected with the support of both parties) in 2021. Last December, Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy tried to pass HR 8 by unanimous agreement, but was blocked by Republicans in the Senate. In a Senate speech Tuesday after the shooting of Uwalde, Murphy criticized his colleagues for their inaction.
“Weapons are flowing in this country like water, so we have mass shootings after mass shootings, and, you know, save me the mental illness nonsense,” Murphy said. “We have no more mental illnesses than any other country in the world. You can’t explain this through the prism of mental illness, because … we are not extraordinary in terms of mental illness, we are extraordinary when it comes to access to firearms and the ability of criminals and very sick people to acquire firearms weapons. That makes America different. “
The threshold of 60 votes needed to end the Senate debate is questionable. Without 60 votes in favor of any gun control legislation, there is no way forward. And right now – and if nothing changes seriously – there are no 60 votes in the Senate for something that is perceived as restricting gun rights.
Closest to tackling the gun violence epidemic was the Senate in 2013, when a bipartisan effort led by West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin and Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Pat Toomie to expand scrutiny received 54 votes. . (Murphy, what is it worth, ignores the use of the Manchin-Tumi proposal as a plan for future action. “Manchin-Tumi is not just a bill to check the past,” he said Wednesday.) It has many sweeteners designed to get the support of the NRA. “) What is remarkable about the Senate arms deadlock is that, as Kerr noted, the vast majority of the public, regardless of political party, supports some new gun restrictions. A 2021 Pew Research Center study showed that 87% of Americans support preventing the purchase of weapons from people with mental illness, while 81% support private arms sales and sales of weapons exhibitions under scrutiny, and two-thirds of Americans support a national weapons and ban database of high-capacity ammunition stores.
And yet, and yet, and yet.
In a speech Wednesday, McConnell said he was praying for those involved in the shooting and blamed the shooter, calling him a “crazy young man” and a “maniac,” CNN’s Ted Barrett said. He did not mention the shooter’s access to weapons or any legislative decisions.
There are people who will argue that this or that proposal would not have prevented what happened in Texas on Tuesday. Which, well.
But go back to Kerr. This is not a dry legislative proposal. This is about who we are and what we want to be as a country. Do we just want to keep rinsing and repeating ourselves with these mass shootings? Do we want to shudder (or count) about what happened in Uwalde or Newtown or dozens of other places in the country?
Or do we want to do what we can to change things – by acknowledging that no public policy proposal is perfect or will it completely solve our problem with gun violence?
“I’ve had enough,” Kerr said as he walked away from the microphone. Same.
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