First of all, it is a horrible event, a tragedy. Period.
But political minds start calculating, even while the body count is underway.
Who did it? Who will get blamed?
The players are already making their points. When tragedies happen the Trump-Fox-guns-GOP-cultural conservatives have their points to score. The left-multicultural-urban-culturally liberal have theirs.
The sides have learned to be quick to make their points because policy gets announced immediately based on the frame given the attack. The 9-11 events were defined as a "war on terror", so we went to war against the purported source of the terror, the Islamic Middle East. Had the event been defined as a shocking criminal act by a criminal gang, America could have understood the response to be one where we enlisted the help of Islamic allies to search out and arrest the conspirators, likely killing them while doing so. It would have focused on the actors, not the religion, and it might have saved America from the current mess.
Note that we did not define the Oklahoma City bombing as a war against America by conservative gun owning white men and call it a "war on radical conservatives" and attempt to round up perhaps a million Americans who generally shared Timothy McVey's political orientation, though of course not his actual willingness to act violently. It was a search and trial of Timothy McVey, a bad man.
Trump has prospered politically by jumping onto these tragic events and proposing policy based on the risks purportedly created by the event. After San Bernardino, "extreme vetting." After Paris shootings, a travel ban. This week, after the truck murders in New York, an end to the Diversity Visa Program.
The consequences for being slow to politicize the event is that the other side wins the policy and political battle. Trump was quick to define the Diversity Visa Program as "a Schumer beauty." It was bipartisan legislation signed by George H W Bush, but Trump got it out there first, tying the name Schumer to the murders. Win for Trump.
The Texas shooting has pros and cons for each side.
Scorecard:
Pro Left: The shooter was a white, native-born American veteran. Trump is forced to name the event an act of "evil", not an act of Islam.
Pro Trump: The shooter had a record of domestic abuse and was dishonorably discharged. This makes him a "disturbed bad guy" and one cannot be expected to make policy around a single lone crazy person.
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| Fox News story on gun-owning hero |
Pro Left: The shooter used an AR-15 and showed photos of it on the internet. He brought a lot of firepower to the church. What purpose is there for guns like this other than mass shootings of people? Make them illegal.
Pro Trump: The shooter was stopped by armed citizens in the church. The way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. No need for gun control. It did not work to keep Devon Kelly from getting a gun. Indeed, we need more people with guns.
Pro Left: The guy has a Christian name and briefly taught Vacation Bible School. See, Christians do shootings, too. Not just Muslims. This wasn't political.
Pro Trump: He didn't teach Bible School for long, and he later talked about atheism. Right wing media says there are indications he claimed to care about Animal Rights and Civil Rights. There are hints he favored social justice. Traditional values are under assault!
Pro Left: Obama released a message of sorrow: "We grieve with all the families in Sutherland Springs harmed by this act of hatred, and we'll stand with the survivors as they recover. May God also grant all of us the wisdom to ask what concrete steps we can take to reduce the violence and weaponry in our midst."
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| Daily Caller |
Pro Trump: Conservative media blast Obama for politicizing the tragedy.
Pro Trump: Rumors of Leftist Plot Immediately go out suggesting the shooter carried an Antifa flag and said "this is a communist revolution." The story circulates. Right wing websites question whether Obama planned and executed the shooting and whether this was part of an leftist ongoing war against Christians. Example: Click Here
Pro Left: Snopes immediately discounts this as "False".
Bottom line: Who won?
Probably Trump. It is too soon to tell for sure, but the fact that local armed citizens shot back, chased, and apparently killed the shooter makes this a probable win for the pro-gun Trump side. The good guys with the guns saved the day.
The public does not see mass murder events by Muslims and mass murder events by white Christians as equivalent. The former is political and part of something bigger and dangerous; the latter is is a one-off bit of criminal derangement. Therefore, any murder event by a Muslim counts as an act of war and demands a policy response, and any murder event by a white native born American demands our respectful thoughts and prayers.
Democrats seek gun control in vain.
This blog has concluded that there is not yet any politically viable path for limits on access to high powered weapons in America. I do not expect any gun control legislation in America relating to high powered weapons until it becomes fashionable for young black, Hispanic, and Muslim men to begin exercising their own 2nd Amendment rights to carry semi-automatic weapons openly. When black and Muslim men say they are carrying weapons to protect their families from "bad guys with a gun" the optics might change. Until then, I expect no change in the law.
2 comments:
This post is boring and trite not for want of excellence, but because the gun issue is dead. Each new gun massacre jolts its corpse like a defibrillator shock, but we all know the patient has expired. The day I knew gun reform was terminal was when Sem. John Kerry posed with multiple rifles in his challenge to a Bush second term in 2004. There are no genuine half measures on gun control in America, just half assed politicking.
The GOP has effectively won not just on guns, but on abortion, charter schools, and immigration. We are a right of cemter culture and body politic, with fits and starts of leftward tugs that mostly just counteract our natural tendencies in drifting right. Other than LGBTQ narrowly defined legal rights, there has been no meaningful leftward movement since the Civil Rights Act of 1968, only centrist expansion of welfare and limited healthcare reform in 2010.
Gun reform is dead Peter. Time to call the place and time of death, which was Sandy Hook Elementary School, December 14, 2012.
Maybe I'm splitting hairs but I don't think he was dishonorably discharged. He was court marshaled and rank reduced to prisoner.
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