President Obama comes out swinging
Every time a mass shooting takes place in America, it seems as though there are forces in motion to keep anything from changing. Rather than address the problem and keep it from happening again, the GOP is quick to dismiss the issue with the usual “thoughts and prayers” while trying to find every baseless scapegoat in the book it can to explain why these violent episodes keep happening, despite their points being easy to disprove.
It’s been nearly a decade since President Obama called for a national sense of urgency and he signed executive orders to combat America’s gun violence epidemic, only for Donald Trump to overturn them. This time, however, President Biden is bringing the fight to Republicans, laying the blame on them if they continue to obstruct common sense reform, warning that they will have blood on their hands.
He then called on Congress to renew the ban on assault weapons that was implemented back in the late 1990s and reduced shootings by nearly half. It remained that way until it was allowed to expire under a Republican-controlled Congress in 2004 and shootings resumed escalating, with each one desensitizing the public a bit more than the last.
He urged the Senate to act now, not to come for everyone’s guns – a task that would be impossible to actually perform – but to bring back measures that already have a precedent and proved effective. By turning up their usual insane rhetoric in the wake of shootings like these, and offering no practical solution, the GOP may have given Democrats the opportunity they’ve needed to finally get rid of the filibuster and get this much needed reform passed, with Biden standing up as a leader at the right moment.
James Sullivan is the assistant editor of Brain World Magazine and an advocate of science-based policy making