“To some people — to people with money, to people who fund political campaigns — guns are more important than children”
You could have heard a pin drop when Kimberly Rubio, whose 10-year-old daughter, Lexi, was one of 19 schoolchildren and two teachers slaughtered by an 18-year-old boy with an AR-15 assault rifle in Uvalde, Texas on May 24, testified at a congressional committee hearing on gun violence on last week.
She begged the politicians to do something, anything, to protect the children of America, as another wave of mass firearm shootings is sweeping across the country.
(According to the non-partisan Gun Violence Archive, between Jan. 1 and June 9 this year, there were 294 “mass shootings,” defined as incidents in which four more or more people were killed or wounded. They included the attack that had stunned the nation 10 days before Uvalde when an 18-year-old white supremacist with an assault weapon, having bragged about his deadly intent on social media, executed 10 Black people in a Tops Friendly Market in Buffalo. A recent survey found that American civilians own no fewer than 393 million guns – that’s more than one weapon for every man, woman and child in the nation – and the number is increasing by about 20 million every year.)
Rubio’s pleas were reinforced by the graphic testimony of Dr. Roy Guerrero, the sole pediatrician in Uvalde. He shocked the most jaded committee members as he described how rounds from the AR-15 used in the massacre had shredded the bodies of the young victims and had decapitated two of them. The doctor denounced the failure of congressmen and senators who lack the courage to take a stand against gun violence – “We’re bleeding out and you are not there.”
If ever there were a moment that might have emboldened politicians to get serious about gun control, it would have been the moment created by Uvalde, happening as it did so hard on the heels of Buffalo. Ironically, the moment was seized not in Washington but in Ottawa, where the federal government presides over gun laws that, though far from comprehensive and readily circumvented, seem unimaginably draconian to U.S. legislators. It’s where Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced new and stricter controls last week.
They start with a freeze on the purchase, sale, transfer, and importation of handguns. Imposed by cabinet order, the freeze is intended to prevent gun lovers from stockpiling weapons until Parliament enacts legislation to make the handgun ban permanent. It will not affect existing owners with legal licences for their guns. Assault weapons, illegal in Canada since 2000, have been subject to a desultory, voluntary buyback program. The buyback is now being made mandatory.
Back on Capitol Hill, the hearing quickly deteriorated into a partisan skirmish. The Democrats went ahead and introduced a “reform” package that included raising the minimum age for gun ownership from 18 to 21 and banning the sale of large-capacity magazines. They managed to get it through the House, but they knew that even such minimal advances would be dead on arrival in the Senate – and they were. At the weekend, senators were struggling to find a way to respond to public pressure for action without upsetting the powerful gun lobby.
Meanwhile, Republican leaders in Congress, who exist in thrall to the National Rifle Association and embrace its treatment of the Second Amendment as Holy Writ, issued a warning to their Democratic colleagues that the NRA would be considering how they vote on gun measures when it hands out its candidate ratings, endorsements and financial support in future elections.
The NRA has all the money it needs to buy enough votes to do what it does so effectively – that is, to block any initiative that it and its allies in the firearms industry fear might threaten the sacred right of Americans to keep arming themselves to the teeth.
Because, as Kimberly Rubio observed, to people who fund political campaigns, guns are more important than children.
Cambridge resident Geoffrey Stevens is an author and former Ottawa columnist and managing editor of the Globe and Mail and Maclean’s. He welcomes comments at geoffstevens40@gmail.com