The gun control debate is over

The great American gun debate has ended. The NRA won. It’s best for the country if those of us on the other side accept that reality and move on.

President Obama and others mistakenly thought the Sandy Hook tragedy opened the door to a new era of gun safety laws. Instead the deaths of those twenty-six children and adults were the denouement. In theater, “denouement” refers to the final part of a drama in which everything becomes clear. It’s the climax to a series of events. No questions or surprises remain.

It goes without saying how tragic was the shooting at that elementary school in Connecticut. But there’ve been thousands of gun deaths since. The chorus of crickets following the slaughter of twelve more at the Washington Navy Yard confirms what we should have recognized in the political aftermath of Sandy Hook.

If those tiny coffins could not overcome the NRA power base, the coffins of twelve adults won’t do it either.

The President spoke of the Navy Yard victims saying, “So the question now is not whether as Americans we care in moments of tragedy. Clearly, we care. The question is do we care enough to keep standing up for the country that we know is possible even though it's hard and even if it's politically uncomfortable?”

Whether a gun rights advocate or a gun control activist, we all care. The political reality demands a confession that those of us who’d like to see gun control measures enacted are a diminishing minority. We had the debate. They won.

Polls show voter support for gun control has dropped from 58% in the aftermath of Sandy Hook to below 50% after the Navy Yard killings. Public support mattered not at all following Sandy Hook. Congress didn’t have to witness the recall elections in Colorado to ignore those polls. They knew better than to ignore the intensity of single-issue gun owners.

Part of it is money. The NRA has a budget of more than 200 million dollars, likely the largest of any American lobby. But it isn’t just the money. It’s also the intensity of their believers.

So for all of us on all sides of this issue the real question becomes, “What’s next?” If those on the left will accept the fact that there will be no new gun regulation, can the NRA and its supporters accept the fact that gun deaths in America are an issue demanding some solution?

Is it conceivable that people of good faith on both sides could put the harshness of the gun control debate behind us, lower our voices, and combine our considerable resources to find the places where our mutual concern and caring for the victims and their families intersect?

Memo to Wayne LaPierre: It’s probably not your proposal to arm teachers. But, what about an honest effort to improve mental health services? Not more money but demanding research-based practices that actually identity people with serious mental illness and addresses those problems earlier?

How about criminal court reforms that demand the judges use their considerable authority not just to punish, but to rehabilitate? 

The Navy Yard massacre might have been prevented if Aaron Alexis’s prior gun crime had been addressed with something other than a plea bargain. Gun crimes, particularly when committed by youthful offenders could be addressed in “gun courts.” Gun Courts are designed for juveniles and young adults who have committed gun offenses not resulting in serious physical injury. They focus on intense supervision, educating defendants about gun safety, and providing immediate responses to violations of court orders. Just as drug and DUI courts get to the heart of the offender’s problems, so do gun courts.

Another point of agreement could be corrections reform. Giving probation officers the resources they need to adequately supervise probationers would make a huge difference. Current unmanageable caseloads are a part of the problem preventing a promising practice from fulfilling that promise.

It’s time for a debate that generates more light and less heat. 

My father taught me that a person is known by the company you keep.

I tried to be what they call “pro-life.” It was 1970. I was 21-years-old and running for the state legislature for the first time. It was the year a Texas woman filed a lawsuit known as Roe v. Wade.

In 1970 hundreds of Americans and thousands of others were dying weekly in Viet Nam. The death penalty was being challenged in legal, academic, and political circles. It seemed abortion was simply one more way the government sanctioned the taking of human life. So I decided that to be consistent, I would be a pro-life candidate.

I had then and yet have many friends who consider themselves “pro-life” who offer honest, thoughtful, reasoned ideas on how to limit or end the practice of abortion. Others insist on radicalizing the debate by saying those who disagree are murders. They block doors to doctors’ offices, calling women making tough personal choices “baby-killers.”

My time as a “pro-life” advocate didn’t last long. Soon I realized I just didn’t like the company one had to keep on that side of the aisle. The same doubts should be occurring today among members of the National Rifle Association. The company one has keep in order to oppose gun safety proposals in the post Sandy Hook era is unsavory at best and, at times unpatriotic.

As with abortion, there are honest, reasonable, responsible arguments on both sides. Even gun owners can understand that while we want the freedom to have guns, there are common sense reforms that will make us safer.

But, to keep membership in the NRA you must align yourself with a ruthless public relations lobbying campaign that attempts to equate the President of the United States with Adolph Hitler and Joseph Stalin. The lunacy of the NRA’s response to a call for national dialogue about gun safety means members’ names and dues are used to peddle the perverse lies the organization uses to stop the discussion before it begins.

The NRA sends out bumper stickers supporting its “A” list of congressmen. They may read “Sportsmen for Lummis” or whomever, but sportsmen are not the organization’s top priority. According to The Nation, “there is much evidence to suggest that corporations that profit from unregulated gun use are propping up the NRA’s activities, much like how the tobacco lobby secretly fronted ‘smokers rights’ and libertarian anti-tax groups, or how polluters currently finance much of the climate change skepticism movement.”

The NRA benefits from its special relationship with arms manufacturers like Bushmaster Firearms Inc., the company that manufactures the assault rifle allegedly used to massacre children in Newtown. The NRA uses your dues to block law enforcement efforts to revoke the gun-selling licenses of crooked dealers, to assure continuation loopholes allowing “private” gun sales with no background check, to allow concealed guns to be carried into bars, restaurants, churches, schools and malls, to block research into the causes of gun violence, and to oppose legislation designed to prohibit gun sales to people on the federal government's terrorist watch list. They also use your money to demolish any politician who questions their radical agenda.

There are no limits in truth or decency to the NRA campaign to prevent a gun safety debate despite the fact that the U.S. suffers more gun violence than any other industrialized nation. For example, when the father of one of the children killed at Sandy Hook testified in the Connecticut legislature for gun safety, he was booed and taunted by NRA hecklers. No class.

Another example is the recent attack on the President’s children. The NRA called Barack Obama a “hypocrite” because he allows armed secret service officers to protect his children. That silliness places the NRA on the far side of the lunatic fringe. They claim guns are necessary to protect ourselves from a “tyrannical government” to persuade people the government is the enemy and the President is coming to take your guns.

No reasonable voices are calling for confiscation of a single gun. Legitimate arguments exist for and against the President’s ideas. But the National Rifle Association seeks to prevent any debate by espousing an unpatriotic, borderline treasonous campaign.  

My father taught me that a person is known by the company you keep. If you are an NRA member, that’s the company you keep.