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After the latest school shooting, Republicans are showing their true colors. On November 30, 2021, 15-year-old Ethan Crumbley allegedly shot and killed four of his fellow students and injured seven at Oxford High School in Michigan. Typically in these situations, the right wing will stand on the principle of family values and shout: Where were the parents? In this case, the parents, James and Jennifer Crumbley, are accused of enabling their son and are now charged with involuntary manslaughter. The Crumbleys are also big Trump supporters, so instead, the right is taking aim at school administrators and teachers. So much for principles.
Now, lives are lost and another community is traumatized nearly a decade after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. At that time, the majority of Americans supported new gun safety regulations after the gunman shot and killed 20 children and six adult staff members before taking his own life. However, lawmakers failed to pass legislation calling for universal background checks for every person buying a gun. Has anything changed since then?
I think it’s unwise to assume that there’s going to be no progress made now, because there was no progress made nearly a decade ago. Because although we still have all of the same elements within the Republican Party that don’t want any additional gun safety regulations and will do everything they can to stop it, public perception has changed to some degree.
And although I’ve said many times before, it seems like unwise political strategy for Democrats to run on gun safety regulations, because it does very little to energize the Democratic base. But it does a lot to energize the Republican base against the Democratic candidate when it comes to state level pushes to actually make changes, whether it’s universal background checks, magazine capacity limits, waiting periods, psych eval, mandatory insurance. I mean, there’s you know, 10 or 12 different things that could be done.
We have another, almost 10 years of these mass shootings under our belt, which hopefully has reduced the tolerance for them among the American public.
We also have different elected officials now, and if we don’t try to make changes in gun laws, then nothing will happen.
