2A/GUNS/POLITICS: “After a gunman in Las Vegas slaughtered country-music fans with assault weapons that mimicked a machine gun, lawmakers from both parties said they would move quickly to ban so-called bump stocks.
After a mass shooter massacred churchgoers in Sutherland Springs, Tex., the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, John Cornyn of Texas, was stirred to action, pledging legislation to bolster the nation’s instant background check system for would-be gun buyers. Congress has effectively done neither.
That inaction sank in on Thursday [2-15-18], as lawmakers confronted yet another mass shooting, this time with some of the survivors imploring Congress to finally take action. Republicans called for prayers, but argued that no single fix to the nation’s gun laws would deter a shooting like the one on Wednesday in Parkland, Fla., that left 17 people dead, many of them children…
Democrats, who have put forward a spate of gun safety bills only to see them left unaddressed by Republicans, who control the House and Senate, seethed with frustration… But the failure to act on the instant background check and bump-stock bills underscored that even on the most modest of gun measures, Congress is simply incapable of a response.
What was striking in the aftermath of the carnage at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School is that, now, even the victims and survivors are willing to call their leaders out.”
-Nicholas Fandos and Thomas Kaplan, “Frustration Grows as Congress Shows Inability to Pass Even Modest Gun Measures,” The New York Times online, Feb. 15, 2018