Several days before Oregon’s primary election, I was slowed by a billboard on Sandy Boulevard that still resonates several days after the Robb Elementary School massacre.
The billboard was empty, save for the defiant graffiti, “We’re Done Voting!!”
Translation: We no longer believe a ballot is the gateway to prosperity and justice in this American land.
I understand that frustration. Voting requires an essential optimism. The patience for incremental change. The trust that the captains on the bridge want to raise all boats, not just their private fleet. The resolve to remain committed to a democratic process that often enshrines, in the halls of power, the likes of Lindsey Graham and Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Yet all that voting has brought us to this unnerving impasse. An 18-year-old purchases two assault rifles and slaughters 19 fourth-graders in Uvalde, Tex., and Congress remains deadlocked and aloof, incapable of responding to the rampage.
When Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., begged his Senate colleagues for an explanation – “What are we doing? Why are we here if not to try and make sure fewer schools and fewer communities go through what Sandy Hook has gone through, and Uvalde is going through?” – at least half a dozen Republicans reaffirmed their unimpeachable allegiance to the gun lockers of “law-abiding citizens.”
No matter how many elementary-school children are torn apart by .223-caliber rounds, those conservatives will not concede there should be limits on the right to bear military hardware. Cameron Kasky was inside Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., in 2018 when a 19-year-old used yet another AR-15-style semiautomatic to murder 17 students and staff. As Kasky told CNN’s Anderson Cooper, “You’ve got these guns that are being sold to Americans and sown into the American narrative as if they stand for freedom.”
And when you challenge that notion, as British reporter Mark Stone did Wednesday while confronting Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Tex., Cruz dismissed him by saying, “This is the freest, most prosperous, safest country on Earth. And stop being a propagandist.”
Think about that. Cruz boasted about safety as he exited a vigil for those 19 children in Uvalde.
Steve Kerr, the coach of the Golden State Warriors, could not restrain his anguish Tuesday afternoon, even as the NBA decided there was no reason to postpone a playoff game 355 miles from Robb Elementary.
“When are we going to do something?” cried Kerr, whose father, Malcolm, was assassinated in Beirut by Islamic Jihad in 1984. “I’m so tired of getting up here and offering condolences to the devastated families who are out there. I’m so tired of the excuses. I’m so tired of the moments of silence.
“Enough. There are 50 senators who refuse to vote on H.R 8, a background check rule that the House passed a couple years ago … Do you realize that 90 percent of Americans, regardless of political party, want universal background checks? Ninety percent of us. We are being held hostage by 50 senators in Washington who refuse to even put it to a vote. They won’t vote on it because they hold on to their own power. It’s pathetic.”
And, after Sandy Hook and Parkland and Buffalo and Uvalde, still unresolved.
As the Pew Research Center noted last September, the percentage of Americans who argue for more gun safety laws has decreased since 2019. But 81% still believe gun shows and private sales should be subject to background checks, and 63% would ban assault-style weapons. In a post-Uvalde Reuters poll, at least 70% support red-flag laws and raising the minimum age for a gun purchase from 18 to 21.
Yet Chris Murphy and Steve Kerr and the rest of us know nothing will change. As Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., told The New York Times, his freedom-loving constituents won’t abide any compromise on gun access: “Most would probably throw me out of office.”
That’s the guiding principle for almost every Republican in the U.S. Senate. Job security on Capitol Hill is far more important than school security at Sandy Hook or Robb Elementary.
“Don’t politicize this” is just another way of saying, “Don’t hold this politician responsible … for savoring the safety in doing absolutely nothing.”
In that vacuum of imagination and leadership, we’ll see more delusional stories about arming teachers, when it’s clear the local Uvalde cops, for all their training, were overmatched and hopelessly unprepared.
Donald Trump and his security detail will strut to the stage at the National Rifle Association convention in Houston, celebrating open carry in a room in which firearms are banned.
And there will be yet another chorus of “Never Again.” You may hear the resolve of parents and communities struggling with unfathomable loss. I’ll see that billboard graffiti on Sandy Boulevard, and its prophetic conviction that good people with a ballot cannot slow this nation’s slide into carnage and murderous ruin.
— Steve Duin
