Earlier tonight, in the wake of mass shootings at a grocery store in Buffalo, an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, and at a hospital in Tulsa, Oklahoma only yesterday, President Biden called upon Congress to pass "common sense gun legislation" in an address to the nation.
Of course, former President Obama used that phrase when he called for the same in 2016. Aside from red flag laws and raising the age at which one can buy a gun, the substance of Biden's proposals isn't that much different from that of Obama vis a vis expanded background checks, renewing the ban on assault weapons and increased mental health services.
The problem with President Biden (and Obama before him) using the term common sense is that we live in a land where common sense is scarce. We live in a land where a critical mass believes Biden did not win the election, COVID is fake and John F. Kennedy, Jr. will rise from the dead.
This is bad enough, but people who ought to know better (namely Republicans) would rather children be slaughtered beyond recognition than abridge the right of an 18-year old to own an AR-15 thereby encouraging ignorance.
It isn't to say that Congress should act for the sake of acting. The last thing I want to see is a War on Guns because that will fail every bit as much as the War on Drugs. But when going to school is more dangerous than serving in the police or in the military then we have a problem we cannot ignore or wish away.
Unfortunately, if a critical mass of the country doesn't care about the deaths of 1 million Americans from COVID then why should we expect them to care about the deaths of 19 elementary school children whose bodies were ripped apart by ammunition?
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