Now that the fiscal cliff fight is over, (for a spell) now that the inauguration is almost upon us, we’re finally ready to have the national conversation about guns (maybe, unless fighting over Chuck Hagel carries us all the way to the next debt ceiling climax). Before it gets going, though, I want to think through a surprising something that’s bothered me about the last month of national gun policy discussions. Believe it or not, this isn’t a post about the NRA or the substance of gun policy. It’s about how a democracy works—how it has to work, if it’s worth having at all.
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It’s relatively obvious that the NRA did itself no favors with its bizarre press conference after the Newtown shooting. The event stood in stark contrast to their reputation. After this shooting, like nearly every other shooting before it, the received wisdom has been that the NRA is too strong and politically savvy to allow substantive changes in American gun policy.
Or, rather, that was the received wisdom, because the chaotic presser showed none of the clinical, calculating power the NRA’s reputed to possess. This wasn’t a damage control of nefarious Beltway puppeteers. It was an outburst of “tone-deaf” nonsense from an organization too inflexible to know when it’s in serious trouble.
Arming police in every one of America’s 98,817 public schools? Saving money on that ~$3.3 billion proposal by asking for armed volunteers to guard the schools? Are we screening them for mental illness? Are we providing ongoing monitoring? Why wouldn’t we insist on similar procedures for ordinary citizens who’d like to buy assault rifles, handguns, etc? How can we be sure that these volunteers are “good guys with a gun?”
And on and on. NRA executive vice-president Wayne LaPierre called for the federal government to maintain “an active list of the mentally ill,” who he later referred to as “lunatics.” He charged the media with various “moral failings,” which mostly consisted of airing violent films, music videos, and other such immoral dreck.
Perhaps some isolated elements of the NRA’s response are viable, politically serious responses to an epidemic of mass shootings. Maybe.
BUT: Taken as a whole, the proposals were thorough evidence of how strange and out of step the organization is. I still think this is about right:
In “a war of all against all,” the only plausible answer to violence is more violence, but this is an absurd response in civil society—especially when we’re talking about decentralizing the threat of violence. Absurd. Exceptionally absurd.
But the left still talks as if the NRA were a secret, all-powerful shaman living in the Capitol’s eaves. After that press conference, though, surely it was clear that they’re better despised than feared. Really? We’ve been afraid of these guys?
Yes. Any opponent, no matter how serious, looks better with hype. Strip that away, however, and you’ll have some idea of how much of their strength is real and how much is only apparent. This is all they are. This is all that they ever were.
Again, though, this isn’t a post about how terrible the NRA has gotten. It’s a post about democracy and taking responsibility. Continue reading this post…