[update below] [2nd update below] [3rd update below] [4th update below]
There is nothing to say about it—after the ritualistic expressions of horror—except that (a) America will witness more such massacres—this is, as James Fallows asserts in The Atlantic, a certainty—and (b) nothing will be done about it, as former congressman Steve Israel (D-NY) writes in the NYT. Which is to say, Congress will do nothing, as it is controlled by the Republican Party, which is, so I wrote the other day, over the extreme right-wing edge on a whole range of issues, including that of guns. And the Republicans in Congress will do nothing despite the fact that, as we learn, the shooter Stephen Paddock had a veritable arsenal in his hotel room, of at least 23 rifles, all legally acquired expect maybe the automatic one. Insofar as the massacre happened because a private citizen was able to legally procure such an arsenal—as a consequence of the Republican Party refusing to make this legally difficult or impossible—then we may say that the Republican Party is ultimately responsible for what happened in Las Vegas on Sunday night. The Republican Party has blood on its hands. There, I said it.
The New Yorker’s Adam Gopnik invariably has the most incisive, powerful commentaries after such atrocities à l’américaine and does not disappoint with his one on this, “In the wake of the Las Vegas shooting, there can be no truce with the Second Amendment.”
On this American exception, The Nation’s Joan Walsh says that “The American impulse to equate guns with freedom and masculinity with violence is killing us.”
Vox has several pieces on this uniquely American problem among developed countries, with two by Zack Beauchamp, one reminding us that “America doesn’t have more crime than other rich countries, it just has more guns“—and thus homicides, suicides, and massacres—and another on how “Australia confiscated 650,000 guns, [after which] murders and suicides plummeted.” German Lopez explains “Gun violence in America…in 17 maps and charts,” and Jennifer Williams correctly calls “White American men…a bigger domestic terrorist threat than Muslim foreigners.”
On the iniquity of the Republicans and the NRA, see the report in Mother Jones on the “gun lobby’s quiet push [in Congress] to deregulate silencers.”
Just crazy.
UPDATE: New York magazine’s Eric Levitz informs us that “If only non–gun owners voted, Clinton would have won 48 states” in the 2016 election—and that if only gun-owners voted, Trump would have won with a 49 state blowout—demonstrating, not for the first time, that the cleavage over guns is the deepest in American politics.
Haaretz has posted the must-watch 5½ minute video of President Obama explaining, at a PBS town hall in June 2016, “why do mass shootings keep happening in the U.S.” Excellent. Boy, how we miss having such a smart, thoughtful, well-spoken president.
2nd UPDATE: Thomas Friedman nails it in his first post-Las Vegas column, “If only Stephen Paddock were a Muslim.”
3rd UPDATE: See Matt Taibbi’s latest, “The gun lobby is down to its last, unconvincing excuse.” Terrific.
4th UPDATE: Scientific American has an article in its October 2017 issue by science writer Melinda Wenner Moyer, “More guns do not stop more crimes, evidence shows.” The lede: “More firearms do not keep people safe, hard numbers show. Why do so many Americans believe the opposite?” This has long been obvious but it’s still good to have the hard data to back it up.
I hear you, but I think your blame doesn’t extend far enough. I think it is too easy to pin the problem just on the evil Republicans. I don’t think the Democrats are clean and innocents. I don’t think all that should have been done or at least attempted in past presidencies has been done. I am under the impression that for decades the issue has been considered impossible to handle. “Bowling for Columbine” goes back to 2002. I can’t remember any powerful or striking initiative that might have shaken the public opinion. I am under the impression that too many people just gave up. ” These mass shootings and killings are really horrible, but what can we do… We probably should do something about the second amendment, but how, we’ll never win ?…” I might ignore major moves, but for all I know they obviously failed…
Le Monde quotes to day The Onion because after each new massacre The Onion publishes the very same paper. The headline reads : “‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens” .
But the last line struck me even more : “At press time, residents of the only economically advanced nation in the world where roughly two mass shootings have occurred every month for the past eight years were referring to themselves and their situation as “helpless.”
Helpless Americans. Helpless America. Two words. Sad but fair headline.
Massilian: I agree with you across the board, though the case of the Democratic Party is complicated. The Democrats have been for stricter gun control legislation since this became a national issue in the late 1960s/1970s but found it not to be a winning issue for them electorally and in view of the power of the NRA. Democratic congressmen in rural areas and the South have had to avoid the issue or not take a pro-gun control position – even Bernie Sanders, whose state is rural, has not been good on this issue – and which affected presidential candidates, electoral college oblige. But that’s changing and for the better, as the Democrats increasingly become the party of urban voters (and have ceased to be competitive in the South).
Addendum here.
Sadly true, I’m afraid.
Arun,
Do you think it is fair to compare neo-Confederates in the US to the OAS, Cite Catholique and other various ultra Montaigne and vichyete groups in France?
Tim: I wouldn’t compare neo-Confederates to the OAS, which was an ephemeral terrorist organization that emerged in the final stage of a colonial war of independence. As for the other groups you mention: perhaps, insofar as they are all profoundly reactionary (in the literal sense of the term).