Latest Mass Shooting Reignites The Gun Debate

Photo by Aaron Kershaw

On Friday, May 31, 2019 Virginia Beach became the newest town added to the scorching national spotlight of mass shootings in the U.S. as a city engineer named DeWayne Craddock, 40, went on a shooting rampage killing 12 people at a municipal center in Virginia Beach. The shooter became the 13th death on the scene when the authorities arrived and returned fire Police Chief James Cervera said Saturday.

"I have a number of officers right now who are processing through what best could be described as a war zone," Cervera said.

Such “war zones” on American soil have seemingly become more frequent in recent years and each time provoking responses from American politicians.

Perhaps most notably, 2020 Presidential candidate Cory Booker attacked the “normalization of mass murder” at the California Democratic Convention.

Booker encouraged Democratic voters and politicians to challenge those of whom he feels stands in opposition of what the 2020 presidential hopeful deems “common sense reforms”.

“It is time that we come together and stand together and take the fight to the NRA and the corporate gun lobby like we have never seen before,” Booker said.

According to multiple reports, Booker dismissed his planned speech in wake of the tragedy and seized on the opportunity to address the Virginia shooting by reintroducing his recent proposal to treat gun ownership similar to car ownership. This policy would require gun owners to register their weapons and institute waiting periods between the purchase of multiple handguns.

On Sunday, President Donald Trump attended a Vienna, Virginia church seemingly to honor Virginians mourning the tragedy. In contrast, President Trump gave no remarks and no mention of the shooting was made while the President was in attendance.

Editor’s opinion:

Guns are one of the most controversial topics in America. The question is, what fuels the inevitability of conflict associated with gun discussions. Are guns by nature controversial because of their practical use or are they made controversial by the tragedies executed with them?

If I could polygraph the politicians, I believe we’d find that guns are controversial because politicians want it that way. Democrats and Republicans both have cultural and policy based identifiers used to make it easy for their constituents to identify who to vote for. Democrats say “gun” and the next word is “control”. Republicans say “gun” and soon after is “2nd Amendment right”. The line in the sand is drawn so that politicians don’t have to make comprehensive reforms and earn support from the public. They need only to say buzzwords and embrace the cheers of their supporters.

Democrats have shown good faith (on this particular policy), proposing ideas for reforms as they seem serious about getting laws on the books to make communities safer. Republicans have not shown good faith on the gun discussion as a party as of yet. Most unfortunately, Republicans have used misinformation campaigns to discourage their constituents from supporting the rival Democrat proposals.

Both during Obama’s tenure and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Presidential campaign, Republicans told crowds that the Democrats plan to take their guns away, but when polled about some of the detailed proposals introduced by Democrats, Republican voters often agreed with the basic reforms.

These reforms included stronger background checks, a position declaring if a potential gun purchaser is on a “No Fly List”; they should not be allowed to buy a gun and other similar reforms. Republicans are muddying the waters because without the cultural identifier of blindly being “pro-gun”, they may then have to fight for the votes of people who currently identify as “2nd Amendment voters”.

In other words, if Democrats and Republicans compromise on any shared legislation, then they may end up sharing a voter base that is currently dominated by Republicans. This is a part of the Republican Party’s constituency they are reluctant to share. Lastly, the NRA hovers over the Republican Party with the means to fund reelection campaigns, therefore red state politicians refuse to bite the hand that feeds them.

With that said, the NRA is another story for another day. For now, I just polygraphed your politics people.