What Can't Be Said: Gun Control

Yet another horrific act of gun violence . . . and, predictably, nary a word is said about what ought to be an obvious concern: the need for gun control. Only one major politician has brought the subject up, but Michael Bloomberg has the advantage of being mayor of a city where the National Rifle Association lacks a constituency that seriously menaces him.  Though he can call on leaders of both parties to speak out, Bloomberg surely knows what holds any national politician back.

Neither Obama nor Romney could weather the hurricane of vitriol and demonization if one or the other were now to propose even modest limits on the sale of assault weapons and super-lethal ammunition.  Among Romney’s most avid advocates at this point must be the NRA and its frenzied adherents, simply because they are convinced that Obama hungers for the chance to curtail the freedom to wield a firearm.

The very people who clamor about Obama’s being an elitist with a dictator’s mentality have imposed on the country a tyranny from which there seems to be no escape. After the massacre at Columbine, one might have thought politicians would have worked up the courage to argue for commonsensical limits on access to guns. After the terror unleashed at Virginia Tech, you might have said to yourself, Oh, come on now, we’ll at least have a debate. After Gabby Giffords was shot in the head, anybody with any sense would have urged, No free use of weapons of mass destruction. No, of course not. End of discussion.

The gun zealots in effect contend that a random mass killing is the exercise of Second Amendment rights that has gone too far—and thus remains an acceptable price for a cherished “freedom.” As long as they hold to that conviction and as long as political discourse is held hostage to them, nothing will change.

Republican and Democratic leaders alike easily lean on the crutch of the platitude that says, “America is the greatest democracy the world has ever known.” It’s not, though—not if a candidate for public office can’t openly talk about a matter of life and death.