Guns may have now caused enough harm to fire themselves to the top of the list of key issues in the 2016 election
On 1st October, nine people – eight students and an assistant professor – were shot dead at Umpqua Community College in Oregon. In any other developed country, this would spark enough outrage for lawmakers to crack down on firearms. Australia famously passed bi-partisan legislation regarding gun possession 12 days after a mass shooting in 1996 and hasn’t seen a similar incident since. But this is America, where there’s a gun for almost every person, and where the Second Amendment, added to the Constitution in 1791, still exerts power on and stirs paranoia in a large portion of the American public, 224 years later.
In the two weeks since the tragedy, the typical anti-gun-control rhetoric – what the New Yorker’s John Cassidy calls the “Republican sad mantra” – have been uttered endlessly by voices across the GOP, in the form of the usual illogical arguments: that more guns are the answer; that the shooting happened because the campus was a gun-free zone; that, as National Rifle Association (NRA) chief Wayne LaPierre once said, “the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun”. The 2016 candidates weighed in with their own versions of the mantra: Marco Rubio unsurprisingly pinpointed “mental illness” as the overarching problem, while Jeb Bush, a proud owner of an A+ from the NRA’s perverse rating system, coldly asserted, “stuff happens”. Mike Huckabee took aim at the president, accusing him of politicising the issue to “advance his liberal, anti-gun agenda”, which he called “ignorantly inflammatory”.
Obama himself predicted these responses during a notably visceral speech on the day of the shooting, admitting that he was politicising the issue, because “this is something we should politicise”. He was markedly emotional and exhibited a last-year-in-office attitude, throwing caution to the wind with his call to pass common-sense gun laws. He foresaw the “routine” reaction – that sad mantra – and challenged them with entirely rational arguments. He predicted the calls for more guns, and asked, “Does anybody really believe that? How can you, with a straight face, make the argument that more guns will make us safer?” He challenged the general public to push their local congressmen and women to affect change. “We collectively are answerable to those families who lost their loved ones because of our inaction.”
A mere three months away from his last year in office, Obama has little to lose by confronting the issue. But given the pro-gun sentiment in much of America, it is political suicide for those running for president to make the topic a campaign cornerstone. The issue wasn’t a talking point during Obama’s first run, and it may well have been in 2012 had the election taken place a few months after the Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy – in which 20 children aged six and seven years old were shot dead. But it was again non-existent, and with his re-election there was also a turnover in Congress, putting the Republicans in charge of both Houses.
This fear of hurting political ambitions by mentioning the word “gun” is what makes Hillary Clinton’s substantial addressing of the issue so admirable – signalling that it could well be a cornerstone of her campaign, and indeed an expectedly important one this time around. Clinton shows notable sincerity on her desire for gun reform, and recently released a brave, comprehensive plan. Among other steps, the proposal calls for universal background checks to precede purchases, and the closing of several get-out clauses that make it easier to buy guns, including the gun-show loophole and the “Charleston loophole”, the latter of which allowed Dylann Roof to buy a gun and murder nine churchgoers in June of this year. It would prohibit the sale of guns to mentally ill citizens and domestic abusers, and would ban assault weapons from the streets (a similar ban was signed into law in 1994 by her husband, but expired and failed to be renewed 10 years later by President Bush). Clinton has not shied away from her defiance in the face of the NRA and has called upon “responsible gun owners” to “take back the Second Amendment from these extremists”. And in another unprecedented action for a presidential campaigner (displaying strength and flexing a muscle that Obama has yet to tense on this particular subject), the plan details that she would take executive action if necessary – thus bypassing Congress – to achieve some of these goals.
Perhaps detailing the plans concretely, as Clinton has done, is the best way to make known that these measures would not, in any way, restrict responsible citizens from ownership – which seems to be the underlying fear whenever the notion of gun regulation is broached. When Americans were asked last month about stricter gun control, 45 per cent supported it and 48 per cent were opposed. But when asked specifically about background checks for buyers, a stunning 93 per cent were in favour, and just 6 per cent were opposed. In fairness, it’s an issue that crosses partisan lines: even deep-blue Vermont, often named the most liberal state in the nation, is fairly pro-gun, perhaps explaining Senator Sanders’ moderate stance relative to his rival. And Oregon itself is another sure Democratic stronghold with existing gun-control provisions – though Roseburg has been described as a red dot in an otherwise blue state. But, for the most part, like almost all issues in US politics, it is a partisan subject. When asked the former question, only 16 per cent of Democrats were against stricter gun control measures, whereas 73 per cent of Republicans opposed them.
On the opposite end of the spectrum from Clinton, then, the sad mantra continues. But one candidate in particular has made some provocative statements that sit even more aloof from the sad-mantra circle of routine responses. Ben Carson made headlines for a weeklong barrage of controversial comments that even Donald Trump would be shocked by. In a tense interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that’s well worth watching, during which the anchor looked uncharacteristically perturbed by his interviewee, Carson explained that the Nazis could have been stopped if the people had been armed. Offending victims’ families, he declared, “I never saw a body with bullet holes that was more devastating than taking the right to arm ourselves away”. And he asserted that had he been present, “I would not just stand there and let him shoot me”, but then cancelled his own already-nonsensical statement by proudly recounting that he once did have a gun pointed at him at a fast-food restaurant, and told the perpetrator, “I believe that you want the guy behind the counter”.
We’ve seen how this always pans out anticlimactically, following the classic “routine” of which President Obama is all too aware. After the “thoughts and prayers” grief period is over, Roseburg will likely just become another name synonymous with gun violence – like Aurora, Columbine, Newtown and the rest – until the next mass shooting occurs and the routine reoccurs. Will Obama find an opportunity to exercise executive action and tackle what he’s called the greatest frustration of [his] presidency? Or can Clinton ignite a flicker of hope in this gridlocked battle? We’ll have to keep our fingers crossed, dubious as it may be. By the time this article is published, the first Democratic debate will have happened, and we’ll have seen if gun safety was finally raised as a focal topic. As Hillary rightly pronounced: “We’re better than this. Our country is better than this.”
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