Photo Credit: Peretz Partensky (Flickr CC)
Two days after the methodical massacre of 58 people by a sniper with dozens of firearms, including high-powered assault weapons, House Democrats stood on the steps of the U.S. Capitol to call for the appointment of a bipartisan study commission to issue recommendations for gun policy reform. Yes—the same people who last summer staged an unprecedented 25-hour sit-in on the House floor in an attempt to force a vote on life-saving gun legislation after 49 people were shot and killed in a nightclub in Orlando, Fla.—decided this time to politely ask for a committee to study the issue.
And even those few breadcrumbs were too much for Wisconsin’s own Speaker Paul Ryan to throw the Democrats’ way. When civil rights hero and Congressman John Lewis “asked if the Speaker would join the Democrats in a show of unity—on a show of action to deal with this … we were told in caucus [meeting] today that the response was, if it has to do with policy, it’s a non-starter.”
“If it has to do with policy, it’s a non-starter” sounds like the mantra the lobbyists for the National Rifle Association (NRA) might repeat to themselves whenever regular programming is interrupted with news of another mass shooting. The giant-check-writing leaders of the corporate gun lobby ensure that Paul Ryan and most Republicans have no reason to offer their constituents anything other than thoughts and prayers whenever the weaknesses of our country’s gun laws are exposed by graphic news footage. In fact, whether or not a politician will take any action beyond a “thoughtful” and “prayerful” tweet can almost be predicted by the amount of campaign cash they’ve raised from the NRA and the gun industry.
The NRA’s money is so compelling that it even purchases ready-made legislation here in Wisconsin. This year alone, we’ve seen a batch of the NRA’s favorites. One bill proposes the elimination of permits, background checks and training for gun owners who wish to carry concealed weapons in public. Another bill would allow felons to own certain types of firearms and guns to be brought onto K-12 school grounds. Still another bill would require the Department of Public Instruction to create a curriculum for teaching shooting to high school students. It’s worth noting that, when the public got a chance to be heard at one of the very few public hearings, the opponents of the NRA-backed bill outnumbered the proponents (nearly all of whom work as lobbyists or with the gun industry) by a ratio of approximately six to one.
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At times, it appears the gun manufacturers and dealers work with the NRA to literally give marching orders to our legislators. And then someone sits in a 32nd-story window of a posh Las Vegas hotel and fires a weapon more than 400 yards into a crowd of country music fans for 10 minutes. The resulting chaos and uproar garbles and interrupts those marching orders to the point where Sen. Ron Johnson finds himself uttering the word most feared by the NRA: “ban.”
The NRA’s shell-shocked paralysis this past week seems to have allowed a little common sense to infiltrate the debate and, hopefully, lodge itself in the brains of certain legislators. If, indeed, it has, it’s up to us to capture the attention of our elected officials and ensure the NRA cannot recover its bearings. Their lobbyists’ hands are a bit shaky now; their aim may be off.
Anneliese Dickman is the communications director of the Wisconsin Anti-Violence Educational Fund (WAVE)—an organization seeking to raise awareness about firearm violence throughout Wisconsin.
