This is the second in a series of posts I plan about the recent Orlando gay-nightclub shooting, by an American Muslim who appears to have been influenced by ISIS and other violent Islamists. By now my readers will surely know a great deal about this horrific event. The topic of this post is:
The Gun-Law Angle is Misapplied Here
It was inevitable, I suppose, that gun-control advocates (mostly Leftists and Democrats) would jump on this massacre as fuel for their efforts to enact stricter gun controls in the US. CNN, for example, reports on some of their rhetoric (WebCite cached article):
Within hours, the Orlando mass shooting at a gay nightclub set off renewed political debates — with Democrats calling for gun control and Republicans blasting “radical Islamic terrorism.”…
“Congress has become complicit in these murders by its total, unconscionable deafening silence,” [Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Connecticut] said in a statement. “This doesn’t have to happen, but this epidemic will continue without end if Congress continues to sit on its hands and do nothing — again.”
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Democratic presidential contender, offered similar comments on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
“We should not be selling automatic weapons which are designed to kill people,” Sanders said. “We have got to do everything that we can on top of that to make sure that guns do not fall into the hands of people who should not have them, criminals, people who are mentally ill. So that struggles continues.”
In this case, the shooter was educated in criminal justice, and worked for a security contractor (cached); thus, he was fully licensed to purchase guns, and that wouldn’t have been affected by most gun-control reforms (since his job would have allowed him access to guns even if most of the general population was prevented from getting them).
I’m not particularly sympathetic to Right-wing, NRA-promoted “let’s-go-back-to-the-Wild-West-when-everyone-was-armed-to-the-teeth” propaganda. In fact, their notion that arming everyone, all the time, will eliminate all violent crime, is laughable and asinine. It just doesn’t work that way … and they know it. All I wish to do here is point out that, in this particular case, gun-control reforms would not have mattered and wouldn’t have prevented this massacre. Advocates of gun control need to learn to pick their battles and choose causes that meaningfully support their arguments and their policies. This shooting — unfortunately for them — doesn’t do so.
Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons.
