No rational administration (NRA)…
No rational administration would propose arming schoolteachers to prevent horrific massacres like the recent carnage that claimed the lives of 17 students at the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
The lunacy of President Donald Trump’s off-the-cuff plan in reaction to the latest of hundreds of mass murders—committed overwhelmingly with military-grade assault rifles—is breathtaking. The bloody rampages have happened not only at public schools but also at country music festivals, movie theaters, universities, and just about any place where large numbers of people present easy targets for someone armed with an assault rifle. How will arming teachers prevent horrors like the massacre in Las Vegas or at the Pulse nightclub?
The common denominator in all these tragedies is that they happen only in the United States, the only advanced country awash with guns and where buying an AR-15 or a similar high-powered assault rifle is as easy as purchasing chewing gum.
The problem is the gun, not the place, and the answer is not turning schools and every other venue in our society into fortresses, much less more guns in the hands of civilians. The pervasiveness of guns in this country, as opposed to every other country, is at the core of the uniquely high rates of gun killings in the United States. Increasing the number of guns to fight against murderous rampages like Parkland or Pulse makes about as much sense as giving firefighters gasoline instead of water to fight blazes.
And how could schoolteachers armed with handguns be expected to stop assailants armed with a weapon that fires many more rounds than a pistol, at a far greater velocity and with much more lethality?
The AR-15, the gun used in Parkland and many other mass killings, is the civilian version of the M-16, the main gun used by the U.S. military in Vietnam. It is a fearsome weapon. The bullet doesn’t just penetrate the body and get lodged inside or produce an exit wound. The AR-15 bullet shreds a person’s insides and leaves an orange-size exit wound.
An ER doctor who treated patients wounded at the rampage at the Fort Lauderdale airport carried out with a handgun and at Parkland wrote that every one of the Fort Lauderdale victims who reached the hospital alive survived while many of the wounded in the Parkland attack came into the hospital with wounds so grievous that no one could have survived them. The trauma surgeons could do nothing to help the teenagers with multiple organs shredded by the awesome firepower of an AR-15.
The reaction of pro-gun politicians, from Donald Trump to Marco Rubio and the rest of the coalition of cowardice, to the Parkland massacre has been no less pathetic for being predictable. The grip of the NRA power and mentality extends to some even in the media who are giving credit to Trump and other gun apologists for acceding to measures minuscule in scope and effectiveness. Because the NRA intransigently opposes even these proposals, Trump and company are said to be “defying the NRA.” As if.
This farce reminds me of an old joke about an English lord who walked into his house to find his wife in bed with another man. The noble Englishman had a violent reaction. He beat to a pulp the lover’s umbrella. In both cases the disproportion between injury and retaliation is laughable.
However, the overwhelmingly Republican politicos who don’t want anything to change on guns that the NRA wouldn’t approve also see a political need to placate a public led by irate students and grieving parents angry enough to mobilize to throw them out of office.
Caught between a rock and a hard place, searching for the inexistent operation to square the circle, Republicans have suggested marginal reforms that wouldn’t even put a dent on the problem (a small increase in the legal age to buy an assault rifle) or that are borderline insane (arming teachers).
They also have become instant advocates of mental health (while cutting mental health funding) as if the source of the problem was mainly psychological. No, it isn’t about mental health either. Only about 4 percent of the perpetrators of these bloody incidents are insane.
They will try anything to distract attention from guns, the real problem. They will also make the most preposterous claims. The NRA, as usual, takes the cake with its rhetoric. NRA President Wayne Lapierre has gone as far as to say that the right to bears arms is conferred by God. The 11th Commandment: Thou shall bear arms.
How many Americans can stomach such tripe? Not nearly a majority but too many still. The NRA has millions of members. By having a single focus, the NRA can aim its limited electoral power like a laser gun to slay those politicians opposed or even lukewarm regarding the gun lobby’s agenda. Those who parrot the NRA line, like our own Marco Rubio, are rewarded with big campaign contributions from the organization.
Americans are taught that the United States is the essential nation. It was one of the earliest democracies. It was a place of refuge for the oppressed and a land of opportunity for world’s poor. In the early 19th century, it was possible for a landless European to settle here, acquire land easily, and prosper. After WWII, the United States grew the world’s largest middle class, which included many blue-collar workers.
The belief in American exceptionalism reflected these realities. But the frontier closed. The middle class has stagnated or declined since the 1980s, and blue-collar workers have lost out to anti-union and other business-friendly policies and to globalization. Policies regarding immigrants and refugees are becoming meaner by the day.
Today this country is exceptional among advanced nations mainly in negative ways: vastly more lethal weapons in the hands of individuals, by far the most homicides, a larger military budget than virtually the rest of the world combined, and the cruelty of its tax and social policies through which, amid an obscenely rich 10 percent, tens of millions lack a living wage, health care, and the chance to attend college.
Yet the determined protests against No Rational Administration (NRA) by students from Parkland and the rest of the country inspires me to believe that this too will soon change.
