Congress ' Complicity in Mass Shootings

I have never lost one of my children much less lost one to the senseless carnage that erupted in Santa Barbara thanks to a mentally disturbed individual having three semi-automatic weapons.  Hence, I cannot fully know the anguish and sorrow felt by the parents of those who lost children in the carnage.  But I can agree with Richard Martinez who lost his son on one thing: Congress is complicit in the ongoing mass shooting sprees.  But for prostituting themselves to the NRA which is in reality nothing more than a front financed by the gun manufacturers, we'd have common sense gun control in America.  Thus, in some ways, every member of Congress who has refused to vote to pass gun control had their fingers on the trigger along with Elliot Rodgers. An editorial in the New York Times underscores this reality.  Here are highlights:

Richard Martinez has a message for the politicians who have been calling to express condolences on the death of his son, Christopher Michaels-Martinez, in the massacre of six people in Isla Vista, Calif., on Friday: “I don’t care about your sympathy,” he said. “Get to work and do something.”

Through his tears, he called lawmakers in Washington “a rudderless bunch of idiots” for bowing to the National Rifle Association and refusing to enact restrictions that might have kept three semiautomatic handguns away from the deranged shooter, Elliot Rodger. “These people are getting rich sitting in Congress,” he said. “And what do they do? They don’t take care of our kids.”

In being bullied by the gun industry into rejecting one of the most effective ways of limiting the proliferation of guns — universal background checks — members of Congress have become complicit in shootings by anyone who should not be allowed to own a gun because of a criminal or mental health record. It is not just the mass shootings like the one in California that the nation needs to focus on (victims in these horrific events make up less than 1 percent of all gun homicides), but also the more than 11,000 individual deaths from gun violence every year, most of which get no attention, or the more than 19,000 annual suicides by gun.

The background check bill failed in the Senate a year ago, mostly because of Republican opposition. The gun lobby, determined to prevent a single restriction from being approved, spread vicious misinformation about the creation of a gun registry that left lawmakers quaking and raised ludicrous fears of government confiscation.

Last year, a consortium of top mental health professionals said the government needed to go further and ban gun possession from those who have been involuntarily committed to outpatient treatment if they pose a danger to themselves or others. People should also be unable to buy guns, the group said, if they have been convicted of a violent misdemeanor, subject to a domestic violence restraining order, . . . 

[P]arents or other relatives should be allowed to petition a court for a restraining order prohibiting gun ownership by those who pose a credible risk of harm to themselves or others.

The greatest danger the N.R.A. poses is not just its lobbying might or its lies, but the hopelessness it induces in good people who have given up pressing for new restrictions. More than 280 Americans are shot each day, and every bullet should send the opposite message.