God and Guns: Will Newtown be America's tipping point?

God and guns  Keep us strong  That’s what this country  Was founded on  Well we might as well give up and run  If we let them take our God and guns  Lynyrd Skynyrd, 2009 “The killer in Aurora, Colo., was very intelligent and farsighted and meticulous. I defy you to write a gun-control law that would prevent someone like this with a long time horizon and a great planning capability from getting the arms he wants. I just think that this is a mistake,” declared conservative columnist George Will in the wake of yet another mass shooting in the United States. He was just one of the many conservative voices who rush to the defence of every American’s right to bear highly lethal arms in the aftermath of such tragedies. The body counts may vary, but the arguments remain exactly the same: Blame the shooter, not the gun. This time around, the anti-gun control lobby is astonishingly quiet.  No one wants to defend the assault rifle or the “hundreds of rounds of ammunition” used to mow down 20 elementary school children, aged between 5 and 10. The standard pro-gun argument — Guns didn’t kill the little ones… — spells political suicide in a nation reeling with grief. As Los Angeles Times notes:

The NRA has not made a statement since the shootings in Newtown. It pulled down its Facebook page and ceased feeding items to Twitter. The gun rights group traditionally has tried to keep out of the news in the immediate aftermath of major shootings. The Sunday political talk shows also had a hard time finding representatives ready to speak up for gun rights. David Gregory of NBC’s “Meet the Press” said the program “reached  out to all 31 pro-gun-rights senators in the new Congress” but had “no takers” to discuss the issue. On CBS, “Face the Nation” also reportedly attempted to book gun-rights advocates, including representatives from the NRA, but none of them would come on the program.

In stark contrast, the usually pusillanimous Democrats are not just speaking out, but putting forward specific legislation to curb the madness. Senator Dianne Feinstein has promised to introduce an assault weapon ban bill on the very first day of the new Congress in 2013; her call echoed by centre-right independent colleague, Joe Lieberman. The proposal would also make illegal large-capacity ammunition magazines that hold more than 10 bullets. [caption id=“attachment_560108” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  A sign at a makeshift shrine to the victims of a elementary school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. AFP[/caption] And the circumstances of the Newtown bloodbath make it near-impossible to dismiss such legislation as wrong-headed and needless. According to the Wall Street Journal:

It isn’t clear whether that assault-weapons ban would have prevented Friday’s shooting. All 26 murder victims at the school were killed with a .223 Bushmaster rifle found near suspected gunman Adam Lanza’s body, according to state police. It hasn’t been disclosed whether that rifle had the features that would have made it an assault weapon and banned it under the 1994 law. However, the high-capacity magazines in the rifle and in two handguns that also were found at the school would have been illegal to buy when the law was in effect.

This is the other reason why the anti-gun control posse is staying mum.  Better to opt for discretion than display your insanity like Texas Congressman Louie Gohmert, the lone pro-gun voice to brave a television appearance. Gohmert’s defence: The principal at the Sandy Hook Elementary School ought to have had an assault rifle handy. What could be more reassuring than the thought of a Rambo-style shootout in a school filled with small children with a dizzying risk of collateral damage. But the gun debate around Newtown is — as usual — muddied by the media’s excessive fascination with the killer.  “The narrative almost always gets formed around the insanity, the extremism of that particular assailant and not a broader discussion of the number of firearms or number of fatalities due to firearms. That doesn’t do much to change public opinion. Immediately the discussion shifts back to ‘He called himself the joker and he had red hair,’” observed communications professor Dhavan Shah of the Aurora killings. Six months later, we can’t stop talking about Adam Lanza’s mental illness, his “tiger mom”, the emotional impact of his parents’ divorce. Some threads of the post-Newtown narrative are already shifting the blame to his gun-loving mother who trained her disturbed son on the shooting range. The more we make it about Lanza, the less we pay attention to the lethal weapons in his hand. “We can’t tolerate this anymore. We are not doing enough and we will have to change," President Obama said at the memorial service in Newtown. But it is lawmakers who have not done enough and need to change, including Obama who has done very little to challenge the status quo. He consistently ducked questions about gun laws on the campaign trail, and continues to ply vague rhetoric that avoids any mention of specific policies. Obama did, however, take one brave step in the right direction in Newtown. As Chris Cilliza points out, “One sentence in Obama’s speech sums up his state of mind. ‘I’ll use whatever power this office holds…in an effort aimed at preventing more tragedies like this,’ he said — a line the incumbent never came close to uttering in Aurora or, before that, in Tucson in 2011.” So is there hope for a sensible new world of gun control? A world that recognises that there is no US constitutional right to carry an assault weapon that shoot 30 bullets per round? Or will this new-found resolve fade alongside the glare of the media spotlight? A recent CNN poll reveals that 57 percent of Americans favour a ban on semi-automatic assault weapons, while 60 percent support outlawing high-capacity ammunition clips. The gun control debate is clearly at a tipping point. But that may matter little for a nation on the edge of a looming cliff — ie the fiscal kind. Come January, the heat of emotion may well cool in the course of political negotiation, and gun control will be just one more bargaining chip on the White House table.