“Do” Something

Can it be that some form of gun control will pass the US Senate this month?

After the Buffalo and Uvalde tragedies, Mitch McConnell gave his blessing for a bipartisan panel of Senators to attempt to write some sort of Gun Control Bill. When more than 80% of the public wants “something” to be done so that another 4th grade class is not slaughtered, even Mitch takes notice.

Last week, a panel of twenty Senators apparently agreed on a Gun Control Bill. Details will be forthcoming after the usual secret wrangling and ego massaging that is required for any bill to pass the Senate.

What is not secret is the composition of the twenty member Senate panel. Here’s a surprise. Only two of the panel are up for election this year, both Democrats. Four of the Republicans are retiring from the Senate in January. The GOP nominees to replace them are all avid supporters of gun rights, even Pennsylvania’s own Dr Oz who wouldn’t know which end of a gun the bullets come out of. The Republican Party will not betray its friends in the NRA.

The other four Republicans aren’t up for re-election for four years by which time the NRA and all those “law-abiding gun owners” will probably have forgiven their trespasses.

The Gun Control Bill needs ten GOP votes to pass the Senate. Thanks, filibuster. Good old Mitch McConnell will ensure that the Bill that eventually gets those final two Republican votes is so watered-down that it is palatable to “law-abiding gun owners” (Is there any other kind?) and yet can be presented to parents of school-age kids as having done “something” to prevent classroom massacres.

Doing “something” to solve a problem is not the same as doing the right thing. There will still be school and supermarket and church and wherever mass shootings as long as assault weapons are readily available to the public. Restricting that is the right thing, Mitch.

By Ed Dufton