In Texas over the Labor Day holiday weekend, a crazed individualwith a gun killed seven people and wounded 22. In the bland, bloodless languageof the moment, such events are called mass shootings.
Across Baltimore over the same weekend, several crazed individualswith guns shot nine people. In the bland, bloodless language of this city, suchevents are called part of a routine weekend.
The latest bloodbaths won’t matter at all, will they?
We go on shooting and killing, and 93 percent of the countrywants background checks, and 70 percent want a ban on military-style assaultweapons, and all those brave peoplewith the power to make this happen listen instead to the bullies with deeppockets from the National Rifle Association.
Whatever happened to the will of the people?
For a few heartbeats, it looked as if President Trump mightshow a little gumption, but he got over it once Wayne LaPierre, the NRA’s leader,whispered a few words in his ear about next year’s presidential election.
In West Baltimore, five men were shot Saturday, and two wereshot in East Baltimore, and two more on North Charles Street. Nice sense of geographicbalance, no?
In Texas, the shootings stretched from an interstate highwayto neighborhood streets to the parking lot of a movie theater. Texas has brandnew laws easing restrictions on gun use in schools, foster homes, apartmentbuildings and houses of worship. The new laws went into effect the day afterthe mass shooting. Nice sense of irony, no?
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said the mass shooter, Seth Ator,shouldn’t have had a gun. He had a criminal history. He’d previously failed agun purchase background check. He didn’t go through a background check for thegun he used over the weekend. Oh, and he was probably crazy, since he’d just losthis job.
This will play directly into President Trump’s posturingsince his little chat with the NRA leadership — Ator was probably crazy withdepression after he’d just lost his job.
That’s Trump’s latest pitch: it’s a bunch of crazy peopledoing the shooting, he informs us. He says this as though America’s the onlyplace on earth with such people.
We must have a lot ofthem. Every day in America, we’re reliably told, 310 people are shot. About ahundred are killed. About two dozen children and teens are shot each day.
If it makes you feel any happier, Baltimore’s not alone inthe carnage.
The NRA’s answer to all of this is scare tactics. Don’t givean inch, they tell their supporters, because it’ll just open the door to thegovernment barging in and taking away your weapons.
Yeah, right.
In a nation of about 330 million people, we’re told thereare nearly 400 million guns in circulation. Nobody’s doing a roundup, folks.What sane people are advocating is the merest gesture of control: anything thatwill keep guns out of bad people’s hands; and the elimination of military-styleweapons intended strictly for mass murder.
The NRA plays the whole country for suckers every time theyissue one of their warnings. And the biggest suckers are voters, who fail to takenote of those politicians in the back pocket of the NRA, who are voted intooffice over and over.
The politicians don’t pull any triggers. They just drive the getaway car for the NRA.
A former Baltimore Sun columnist and WJZ-TV commentator, Michael Olesker is the author of six books, most recently “Front Stoops in the Fifties: Baltimore Legends Come of Age” (Johns Hopkins University Press).
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