JUNE 16, 2016
The nation hasn’t exactly joined hands
in a united response to the Orlando massacre. But since this terrible mass
shooting happened in one of the most weapons-friendly places in the country,
maybe we can at least all agree that having wildly permissive gun laws does not
make a city safer.
O.K., probably not.
On Wednesday, Donald Trump took time out
from vilifying Muslims and put some of the blame on gun control. If the patrons
of Pulse, the gay bar in Orlando, had been carrying concealed weapons, he said,
they could have taken control of the situation. The gunman would have been
“just open target practice.”
(This was at the same speech where he
congratulated himself for his stupendous relationship with the gay community,
suggesting he didn’t “get enough credit” for having a club in Palm Beach that
was “open to everybody.” This is a little off our topic today, but I have to
once again point out that Trump’s club is open to everybody with $100,000 to
cover the membership fee.)
But about guns. Let’s follow Trump’s
thought. It’s easy to buy a gun in Florida and supereasy to get a permit to
carry around a concealed weapon. Even the Florida Legislature, however, doesn’t
allow people to carry guns into bars. Trump did not specifically say that we
need to uphold Americans’ freedom to drink while armed. But there doesn’t seem
to be any other way to interpret his argument.
Also, there actually was an off-duty
police officer working in the club who tried to shoot the gunman but failed.
This is important, because the myth of the cool and steady shooter is one of
the most cherished beliefs of the National Rifle Association and its
supporters. Trump himself has bragged that if he’d been in Paris on the night
of the attacks there, he would have shot the terrorists. (“I may have been
killed, but I would have drawn.”)
This is an excellent example of
delusional gun thinking. Although Trump frequently reminds us he has a permit
to carry a gun, there’s no indication he’s ever done so. And there’s certainly
no evidence whatsoever that he has any skill in hitting things.
It’s very, very difficult to draw, aim
and shoot accurately when you’re under severe stress. It’s one of the reasons
that police officers so often spray fleeing suspects with bullets. They can’t
hit a moving target, even though they get far more weapons training than your
normal armed civilian.
In Florida, people who want to carry a
gun merely have to be able to demonstrate they can “safely handle and discharge
the firearm.” Nowhere does it say anything about accuracy.
A few weeks ago in Houston, a
25-year-old Afghan war veteran named Dionisio Garza walked up to a stranger
sitting in a car at a carwash and shot him in the neck while railing about
“homosexuals, Jews and Walmart,” according to local reports. He fired off 212
rounds, mostly from an assault rifle, hitting a police helicopter and a nearby
gas station, which burst into flames. The police said a neighbor who heard the
shooting came running with a gun, but was shot himself.
People who hear this story may draw
different morals. The way we’ve been going, it’ll be a miracle if some member
of the Texas Legislature doesn’t submit a bill requiring employees of carwashes
to be armed at all times. However, others might note that the weapon in this
case was an AR-15, the same type of military-style rifle that was used in the
Orlando shooting, the Newtown school shooting and the terrorist attack in San
Bernardino. It would seem as if the best way to cut down on mass shootings
would be by eliminating weapons that allow crazy people to rapidly fire off
endless rounds of bullets.
The possibility of banning assault
weapons like the AR-15 is most definitely not on the table in Congress,
although Hillary Clinton supports it, and has brought it up a lot since
Orlando. No, the current debate in Washington is over whether people on the
government’s terror watch list should be kept from purchasing arms.
The fact that even people who aren’t
allowed to get on a plane can buy a gun in this country is obviously insane.
Yet most of the Republicans in the House and the Senate regard changing the
status quo as an enormous lift. “I think you’re going too far here,” Senator
Lindsey Graham of South Carolina told the backers during one of the bill’s
pathetic trips to nowhere.
Since the Orlando shooter had actually
spent some time on the terror watch list, the pressure seems to be growing.
Trump says he’ll meet with the N.R.A. to talk over the matter. Perhaps, after
all this time, we’ll get some pathetically minor action. Then only apolitical
maniacs would have the opportunity to buy guns that can take out a roomful of
people in no time flat.
