On Tuesday night, following a shooting at a school in Texas that left 19 children and two adults dead, that person was Steve Kerr, the head coach of the NBA Golden State Warriors. He was openly emotional, angry and frustrated.
“When are we going to do something? I’m tired. I’m very tired of going up here and offering my condolences to the devastated families out there. I’m tired of the moments of silence. Enough … So I beg you, Mitch McConnell and all You senators who refuse to do anything about violence and shootings in schools and supermarket shootings, I ask you, will you put your own desire for power ahead of the lives of our children and our elders? “Our church attendants? Because that’s what it looks like. That’s what we do every week. I’m sick of it. I’ve had enough. We can’t fall asleep with it. We can’t sit here and just read about it and say let us have a moment of silence. “
(For those who want to fire Kerr as just a basketball coach, it’s worth remembering that his father was shot dead in 1984 at the American University of Beirut.) Kerr referred specifically to HR 8, a project House law that would expand background checks to include private arms sales and arms display sales. The measure was first passed in the House in 2019: eight Republicans joined 232 Democrats to vote on it, but had no way out of the Senate. It was re-introduced in the House (and re-approved with bipartisan support) in 2021. Last December, Connecticut Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy tried to pass HR 8 by unanimous consent, but Senate Republicans failed. block out. In a speech to the Senate on Tuesday after Uvalde’s shooting, Murphy punished his colleagues for their inaction.
“Weapons flow in this country like water, and that’s why we have mass shootings after mass shootings and, you know, save me shit about mental illness,” Murphy said. “We have no more mental illness than any other country in the world. This cannot be explained through the prism of mental illness because … we are not atypical of mental illness, we are atypical when it comes. Access to guns and the ability of criminals and very sick people to get guns. That’s what makes America different. “
At issue is the 60-vote threshold needed to end the Senate debate. Without 60 votes on any gun control legislation, there is no way forward. And for the time being, and unless something important changes, there are no 60 votes in the Senate for anything that is perceived as a reduction in gun rights.
The Senate was closest to addressing the country’s armed violence epidemic in 2013, when a bipartisan effort led by West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin and Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Pat Toomey would have expanded the background checks received 54 votes. Murphy, meanwhile, dismissed the use of the Manchin-Toomey proposal as a model for future action. “Manchin-Toomey is not just a background check bill,” he said Wednesday. sweeteners in its design. to get the support of the NRA. “) What is remarkable about the gun deadlock in the Senate is that, as Kerr pointed out, the massive to some new arms restrictions. A 2021 survey by the Pew Research Center found that 87% of Americans supported preventing people with mental illness from buying weapons, while 81% supported the sale and sale of private weapons at trade shows. weapons subject to background checks. Two-thirds of Americans supported a national weapons database and a ban on high-capacity ammunition magazines.
And yet, and still, and still.
Speaking Wednesday, McConnell said he was praying for those involved in the shooting and blamed the shooter, calling him a “disturbed young man” and a “maniac,” CNN’s Ted Barrett reported. He did not mention the shooter’s access to weapons or any legislative solution.
Some will argue that this proposal or that proposal would not have prevented what happened on Tuesday in Texas. So good.
But back to Kerr. This is not a dry legislative proposal. It is about who we are and who we want to be as a country. Do we want to keep rinsing and repeating these massive traits? Do we want to fall asleep (or in numbers) to what happened in Uvalde or Newtown or dozens of other places in the country?
Or do we want to do our best to change things, with the recognition that no public policy proposal is perfect or that it will completely solve our problem of armed violence?
“I’ve had enough,” Kerr said as he walked away from the microphone. Same.