If Newtown massacre didn't move the gun debate, Navy Yard killings unlikely to either

Louis Freedberg

Instead of spurring the nation to action on gun control, the Sandy Hook Unproblematic Schoolhouse massacre appears to have had an unexpected effect – removing the outcome of gun control for the foreseeable future from the national policy calendar.

That has get distressingly articulate in the week since still another massacre, this time at the Washington Navy K but blocks from the U.Due south. Capitol.

As a consequence, the response to the Navy Yard killings has been depressingly tepid, a reflection of the political reality that if a gun massacre of 6- and 7-yr-olds sitting at their classroom desks could not mobilize the political classes to action, that calling for gun regulation after a massacre of 12 adults would exist equally futile – and for some suicidal politically.

Yesterday at a memorial for the Navy Thousand victims, President Obama, in one of his virtually moving speeches, said the killings "ought to be a shock to all of us" and should spur Americans to demand "a mutual sense" balance between gun rights and gun control." Instead, he said, he sensed a  "creeping resignation" that these repeated killings are "somehow the new normal."

But underscoring his own resignation, he conceded "the change we need will not come up from Washington." Even equally he said "our tears are not enough," he did non propose any legislation that might have stopped the deranged Aaron Alexis from buying a shotgun two days before the killings with the intent to kill and maim.

While some states did respond legislatively to the Newtown killings – most notably New York and Colorado – the National Rifle Association and its supporters were able to squelch any coordinated national assail on weapons circulating in neighborhoods, in the hands of people whose only intent is to use them for an evil purpose.

Perhaps the almost memorable response to Newtown was NRA Executive Vice President Wayne La Pierre's annunciation that "the only affair that can stop a a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun" — followed past a call for more than guns.  Its National School Shield initiative chosen for "a selected school staff member to exist designated, trained and armed on school holding" in every school in the nation.

LaPierre was at to the lowest degree consistent yesterday when he repeated that mantra on NBC's Meet the Press, proverb that the problem at the Navy Yard was that "there weren't enough adept guys with guns" to forestall the attack, and that only "when the good guys with guns got there, it stopped."

With perfect timing to further squelch any serious effort to revive the gun regulation fence, merely days before, ii Colorado legislators – one of them the president of the State Senate – were thrown out of role in a call up election inspired past their support for one of the few meaningful country gun laws to have been passed in response to the Newtown killings.

Meanwhile, the killings of children in neighborhoods across the nation continue in tragedies that aren't reported beyond ane or two nights on local broadcast news. Last month in Oakland, where EdSource's offices are located, Drew Jackson – simply 1-year-former – was shot and killed while sleeping alongside his male parent by a gunman shooting through a bedroom window. A month before, 8-year-onetime Alaysha Carradine was killed when someone fired shots through the door of the apartment where she had gone for a sleepover with her friends – two of whom were also shot but survived.

An EdSource survey showed that many state'due south largest school districts did in fact respond to the Newtown killings. Nineteen districts made changes to their school safe plans, including Los Angeles Unified, which fix a plan to take constabulary officers and other police force enforcement personnel to visit every elementary school or eye school every day. Montebello Unified added resource officers at all of its high schools, and installed photographic camera systems at school facilities throughout the commune. Corona-Norco Unified required all its approximately 5,000 employees to wear identification badges at all times. And then on.

But these efforts won't do anything to reduce the gun violence on the streets surrounding our schools. They don't inspire confidence that some other Columbine, Aurora, Sandy Hook or Washington Navy Yard massacre won't happen again, at any moment.

States acting on their own can't do the chore. Equally I wrote last Dec, California is ranked ahead of every other state on the gun regulation scorecard, including a ban on some of the almost deadly assault rifles.  All the same the state is withal flooded with guns. Most ten meg weapons were sold in the state over the by two decades, and over 600,000 in 2011, the concluding yr we have figures on.  And those were simply the legal, registered sales.

So here we are, postal service-Sandy Hook. The killings there, which should take moved us to do something meaningful to make certain that children don't become victims of random gun violence in their schools or neighborhoods, has had just the reverse effect: frightening our political leaders into doing nothing at all.

Louis Freedberg is executive director of EdSource in Oakland.

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Source: https://edsource.org/2013/if-newtown-massacre-didnt-move-the-gun-debate-navy-yard-killings-unlikely-to-either/39211