“We will,” Biden replied, adding a thumbs up, on a chilling day when he and First Lady Jill Biden paid tribute to the 19 children and two teachers killed last week in a barbaric attack that revived the debate. perpetually useless of the nation on arms. .But Biden’s chances of doing “something” seem slim given the limited scope of the executive branch to reshape firearms laws and his administration’s struggles to exercise its will in Washington. And despite the national mourning mood, there is no indication of a fundamental change in tortured politics that would allow a Republican Senate minority to block significant action on gun legislation. As usual, after a horrific massacre, there are optimistic noises in Congress that incremental gun reform is possible. But the hard lesson of recent history is that the momentum fades with each passing day after the carnage.
Presidents travel to the places of tragedy to express the solidarity and empathy of a shocked country, to try to offer a minimum of consolation to the relatives of the lost and to galvanize the collective mourning in a time of national unity and action.
Biden, whose life has been marked by family tragedy and the loss of two of his children, was uniquely equipped for the first two requirements of his mission. But given the stagnant reality of national politics and the GOP’s fervent opposition to any change in gun laws, the idea that Uvalde is the time when a critical mass of public outrage overcomes political inertia seems far-fetched.
As a sign of how depressing these shootings have become, Texas Sen. Roland Gutierrez told CNN affiliate KSAT that Biden told him “we will try to destroy this school, build it.” ne new, “because there is a federal grant. process to demolish schools that have been mass shooting sites.
“In what kind of world are we living in, that legislation was created to destroy these schools?” Gutiérrez asked during the interview.
The Justice Department will investigate the response of law enforcement
However, in the most specific sign of a federal government response to the Ugalde massacre last Tuesday, the Justice Department said it would review law enforcement response during elementary school killings. Robb. CNN reported that 19 law enforcement officers were left outside the classroom where the children died for 50 minutes waiting for room keys and tactical equipment. The revelations raised the agonizing possibilities that these exits from active shooter protocols could have cost lives. In the legislative sphere, Senate President Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, told CNN’s “State of the Union” that he felt a “different feeling.” among GOP colleagues given the horror of atrocity against young children in Texas. But he warned that any eventual deal would be limited. And in the same program, Texas Republican Rep. Dan Crenshaw stressed the limited openness for engagement in the Republican position. He rejected proposals such as universal background checks for gun purchases, red-flag laws to keep guns away from people seen as a threat and bans on people under the age of 21 from buying powerful semi-automatic rifles. Like many Republicans, he called for school safety to be enforced. The level of weapons, training and security required would cost many millions of dollars in an often underfunded public education system and would require children to spend their formative years effectively under great guard. Crenshaw’s arguments were symptomatic of the position that any arms control measure would be effectively anti-American, a view that weighs heavily against any effective action in Congress. The cost of this absolutist philosophical position, which leads to widespread availability of deadly weapons and the usual mass killings, was painfully revealed in a heartbreaking CNN Dana Bash interview with Adrian Alonzo, which took place all day Tuesday. trying to find his niece, Ellie Garcia, only to find out he was among those who died.
“By far, the worst day of my life. And I’ll never forget that day. I can play those hours so vividly in my mind and it’s just etched in my mind,” Alonzo said.
Ellie would have turned 10 next Saturday.
Trump goes from mourning to politics
While the president’s power may be limited, he did his emotional duty and more on Sunday, spending three hours with bereaved families on Sunday afternoons. At one point, with the first lady by his side, he touched Mandy Gutiérrez, the headmistress of Robb Elementary School, in a moving way, next to a pile of flowers growing in a makeshift memorial.
Former President Donald Trump did not make that trip, and chose to consolidate his position with Republican-based voters at a time when his full control over his own movement is being questioned ahead of a possible campaign. the White House in 2024.
Trump appeared Friday at the annual leadership forum of the National Rifle-Institute for Legislative Action Association in Houston, less than 300 miles from Uvalde, and read the names of each of the massacred children and teachers .
“Every precious young soul that is taken is an incomprehensible loss,” Trump said, but he quickly moved into politics, lashing out at Biden and other Democrats for raising the issue of gun security reviews after the massacres. in Texas and earlier this month in Buffalo, New York. York, both run by 18-year-olds with legally purchased semi-automatic weapons.
He argued that it was not fair for law-abiding gun owners to be deprived of those weapons because of the actions of the “sick and demonic” attackers. He proposed more weapons to schools to protect children and to turn school buildings into fortresses.
And Trump explained the argument that even small reforms are a ploy to confiscate the weapons of Americans, points often used by the NRA and other conservatives.
“Once they take the first step, they’ll take the second step, the third, the fourth, and then you’ll have a completely different look at the Second Amendment,” Trump said.
The idea that even a horrific carnage like the one that took place last week in Texas should never diminish the magnitude of the freedom of Americans to possess weapons of war of great power resonates in red, more rural states. usually represented by Republicans, where Trump is still very popular. It also helps to explain why even those Republican senators who might be willing to take modest steps to keep deadly weapons out of the hands of assassins find it such a hard vote and why it is difficult to reach the required 60-vote threshold. to pass important legislation. – a feature of Senate rules that even some moderate Democrats are unwilling to accept change.
One Republican who is changing his position is Rep. Adam Kinzinger. The Illinois congressman said he was now open to a ban on AR-15 rifles following a massive shooting burst.
“Look, I’ve been against a ban, you know, it’s been around for a while now. Kinzinger told CNN’s Bash about “State of the Union” when asked if he was still opposed to “a ban on the type of assault weapons used in the shooting.”
Kinzinger, however, is not a representative sample of the GOP, as he has freed himself from the orthodoxy of the party by breaking with Trump, even about his lies about election fraud. He has decided not to run for re-election in the fall and is therefore no longer in debt to Republican activists who would consider his comment a heresy.
But the argument that any arms restrictions would unacceptably violate the rights of law-abiding gun owners is inherently political. While the Constitution says that the right to bear arms will not be infringed, it does not provide that Americans have the right to have any weapon of their choice, especially those fired at a rate of lethality that the founders never they could have imagined. And the campaign against the tightening of gun laws prioritizes the rights of gun owners over those of innocent victims, such as those in Texas who last week had their right to life destroyed in an instant.
These positions are so entrenched that it seems unlikely that the feeling of helplessness in the face of repeated massacres will dissipate quickly. It’s easy to imagine Biden and the first lady appearing soon on another eve for the massacre victims. For the president, doing “something” might be impossible.
CNN’s Jennifer Henderson contributed to this report.