"Isn't it tragic?"

New York City's mayor isn't having any of today's sentimentality and political postponement:

Soothing words are nice. But maybe it’s time the two people who want to be president of the United States stand up and tell us what they’re going to do about it, because this is obviously a problem across the country. And everybody always says, "Isn’t it tragic?"

Michael Bloomberg is of course insulated--through locale, term-limitation, and independence from the quivering two-party system--from the deadly politics of guns. But it would be fallacious to argue that his insulation perforce contaminates the integrity of his view. The political inaction of sentimentality is as predictable as yet another mass killing. This madness will go on, and on, and on, as long as we comfort ourselves with the words, "Isn't it tragic?"--rather than through a brutal, full-scale political offensive on the thoroughly mad Wayne LaPierre and his little congressional Igors.

There must be some way to remind ourselves that there are 310 million of us, minus the handful numbers of the lunatic fringe. And merely a handful it is; I have known over the years more than a few members of the National Rifle Association who believe its absolutism to be absolutely nuts. They know what assault rifles and 30-clip magazines are for, and it isn't for use against killer rabbits.

Just how does the true "silent majority" mobilize? I suppose in the selfsame way that movement conservatism did nearly a half-century ago--by a brazen ballsiness that won't be intimidated by the prevailing institutional powers that be.

Comments

[SueMe]

I wondered how long it would take before some moron suggested that if movie-goers had been armed they could have stopped the gunman. Well, Luoie Gohmert, R-Texas, just filled that void.

[japa21]

The problem has several layers. For one, the NRA does do a lot of good work in terms of teaching gunsafety, etc. Secondly, what has happened over the years is that Republicans and the NRA combined have done a good job of using the slippery slope argument. Any law, no matter how innocuous it may seem is just the preliminary. Hell, they even turned Fast and Furious into a plot with an ultimate goal of taking away the rigths of Americans.
Third is the plain craziness of LaPierre. The man is certifiably insane and as long as he is the head, which means alive, of the NRA, there will be no ability to talk about any tightening of gun laws. He would, and on this I feel very comfortable, actually incite violence if there was any move at all. And he has enough lunatic supporters that would take him up on it.

[Peter G]

I suspect you have a harder row to hoe here than you can imagine. The idea of government as evil or even potentially evil pervades the political extremes. If you peruse the left leaning blogs you will find the issue of gun control does not have universal appeal and the slippery slope argument noted by Japa has some appeal to the left, to a lesser degree than the right it is true,but it exists nonetheless. As long as this visceral mistrust of the very idea of government looms large, gun control, in almost any form, is a lost cause.