A school shooting reflexively leads to calls for gun control, and currently for Trump to be a “Nixon-to-China” emissary to the NRA to make gun ownership more difficult. Lost in the noise is whether any of this will do any good, and any suggestion that there be a Pelosi-to-the-Gun-Control-Lobby or Schumer-to-the-Gun-Control-Lobby. It’s only Trump-to-the-NRA.
This boilerplate, one-sided prescription ran at the top in “Axios AM” for 2/16 by MIke Allen: “1 big thing: Why Trump drags his feet on guns”. According to Allen, a Trump delegation need only go to the NRA. I’m waiting for Bernie, Nancy, Chuck, and the rest of the Democratic Party apparatchiks to be envoys to the Brady Campaign. Allen’s blinders don’t seem to allow a place for moderation of gun control zealots in his field of vision.
Probably Allen’s blinders has much to do with the sociopolitical nest that he inhabits. Speaking of sociopolitical nests, we’ve got a national one that goes further to explain the gun violence than anything off the lips of Nancy Pelosi. The straws of the nest include: (1) many no-dad-in-the-home families; (2) insular lives in an obsessively digitized world; (3) a craven fixation on girls, girls, girls that leaves little room for boys – except for Ritalin; (4) the attempt to embed morals through secular means only; (5) the segregation of faith into the home and sanctuary; (6) absentee parents in pursuit of material comforts, etc., etc., etc.
The Dems’ only answer is some form of chant about gun control. If guns were confiscated or regulated and priced out of society, would we be any safer? In other words, would making the whole country into one big soft target be preferable? I doubt it. The preferred method of mayhem would shift to cars, machetes, pressure cookers, box cutter/commercial jets ….
Here’s a suggestion: Let’s turn our schools from soft to hard targets. It’s what we might have to do in a culture of our own making.
RogerG