If the mass murder of 20 children and six adults at Newtown, Connecticut’s Sandy Hook Elementary School didn’t lead to stricter gun control measures, the murder of nine people at Oregon’s Umpqua Community College probably won’t either.
Even the sheriff of Douglas County, who had to announce the death toll in Roseburg on Thursday, is no fan of gun control. He wrote to Vice President Joe Biden in the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre to formally request Biden “NOT tamper with or attempt to amend the 2nd amendment.
“Gun control is NOT the answer to preventing heinous crimes like school shootings,” Sheriff John Hanlin wrote in 2013.
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Hanlin’s fears were never realized and the Republicans (with the help of some independents and a handful of Democrats) managed to prevent the Democrat-controlled Senate passing reforms to bring in expanded or universal background checks and stopped a proposed assault weapons ban dead in its tracks.
It’s the politicians who blocked such measures who have “blood on their hands,” according to Henry Giroux, a professor of English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University.
“When you live in a country in which you’re constantly bombarded by the assumption that the government is the enemy of democracy and you’re told that you live in a national insecurity state, where the only thing that matters is fear and that nobody can be trusted, I think that people tend to believe that… gun ownership is one of the few safety features they have to be able to live their lives in a way in which they can actually function as human beings.”
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It’s not just the lawmakers he blames, but those who influence them — the lobbyists.
The Obama administration and gun control proponents are “paralyzed because the gun lobby has so much money and influence,” Giroux told Global News. And the president knows this.
“The grip of the NRA on Congress is extremely strong,” the commander-in-chief said in a June interview on the podcast WTF with Marc Marron.
Want an idea of just how powerful the U.S. gun lobby is? Take a look at the 2014 midterm elections, when the Republicans maintained control of Congress and took control of the Senate. At that time, the National Rifle Association, with its five million members, was the loudest voice against gun control reforms.
The NRA doled out $12 million during the campaign and, according to CBS, 95 per cent of the candidates it supported won their races.
READ MORE: Support for gun rights runs deep in Oregon town shocked by college shooting
It also spends a lot of money to do that, beyond what it spent during the 2014 midterms.
A report in the Washington Post showed the NRA spent $32 million in 2012, on everything from federal lobbying ($6 million) to positive and negative advocacy ($24.3 million).
It’s that kind of influence that Giroux said has created “a country in which the gun lobby can actually convince politicians that people should actually own assault rifles and large magazine clips.”
And until restrictions are put in place to prevent politicians from “being bought and sold by the gun lobby,” gun control measures aren’t likely to change, Giroux added.
By the numbers: American support for gun control vs. gun owner rights
Americans are divided on gun control, but not as drastically as all the rhetoric may lead you to believe.
There was a boost in support for gun control measures after the December 2012 shooting in Newtown, but that has slid ever since and support for protecting the rights of gun owners has steadily gone up — a trend that has more or less remained the same for the past two decades, according to the Pew Research Center.
Pew reported in August the results of a bipartisan survey on gun rights versus gun control, showing support for gun control was down to about 50 per cent of Americans, while support for the rights of gun owners was at 47 per cent. In 1993, that gap between the two views was much greater: 57 per cent in favour of gun control versus 35 per cent support for gun ownership rights.
There are some things Republican and Democratic voters agree on, like laws to prevent people with mental illnesses from purchasing guns (79 per cent of Republican and 81 per cent of Democrats) and background checks for gun shows and private sales (79 per cent of Republicans and 88 per cent of Democrats).
Where they disagree, according to Pew’s findings, is on the issue of a database to track gun sales (85 per cent of Democrats favoured it, and 55 per cent of Republicans) and putting a ban on assault-style weapons (70 per cent of Democrats are in favour of that, but only 48 per cent of Republicans are).
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