How many times does someone have to drown in front of us, while we do nothing (and, instead, actually enable the death), before it's time to conclude that perhaps we are part of the problem?
From EJ Dionne at the Moderate Voice:
For all the dysfunction in our political system, a healthy pattern usually takes hold when a terrible tragedy seizes the nation’s attention.
Anyone who dares to say that an event such as the massacre at a Colorado movie theater early Friday morning demands that we rethink our approach to the regulation of firearms is accused of “exploiting” the deaths of innocent people.
This is part of the gun lobby’s rote response, and the rest of us allow it to work every time. Their goal is to block any conversation about how our nation’s gun laws, the most permissive in the industrialized world, increase the likelihood of mass killings of this sort.
So let’s ask ourselves: Aren’t we all in danger of being complicit in throwing up our hands and allowing the gun lobby to write our gun laws? Awful things happen, we mourn them, and then we shrug. And that’s why they keep happening.The Boomtown Rats wrote "I don't like Mondays" in 1979, thirty-three years ago. Violence in America isn't a recent problem. It's been going on for a while now. And nothing serious is ever done about it because the gun lobby is ruthless, owns the Republican party, and preys on the Democrats usual fear of doing anything that isn't agreeable to 100% of the American people.
So the next time some nut goes on a shooting spree with weapons the gun lobby made it easier for him to get - and he will - let's stop pretending like we care, because as a nation we really don't.
