The simplest course for President Obama is to make some nice
speeches – as his predecessors have in similar circumstances – and hope that other problems take
people’s minds off Newtown, Connecticut.
There is no shortage of other problems.
In a pre-election blog we wrote that, given the state of the country and
the world, the winner of the election might be the real loser. Tonight, as he ponders the wisdom of taking
on the NRA, he may wish Romney had won.
But that would be wrong.
He could be the right man in the presidency at the right time. For if the massacre of 20 little children can’t
move this nation to end its gun culture, then nothing can. If Obama, one of our most gifted orators,
can’t move the public to demand tough federal gun-control laws, then no one
can.
The NRA is
politically very powerful, with many Congressional allies. For any politician, a cardinal rule of
self-preservation is: Don’t upset the NRA. Yet the NRA has 4.3 million members. That
means that there are about 296 million people in the United States who are not
members of the NRA. How many of those
296 million believe that this nation, more than any other developed country,
has tolerated for far too long an obsession with guns – not the kind one hunts
with, but the kind that is manufactured for one purpose and one purpose
only: to kill other human beings, as
many as possible in the shortest possible time?
In the eighteenth century this country’s founders crafted
the second amendment as a counterweight to an oppressive government, and many
believe that freedom to bear arms is still our best defense against
tyranny. But that’s nonsense. We live in
an age of drones and wiretaps and security cameras and Navy Seals and
the CIA. Does anyone really think that a
stash of firearms will defend him and his family against a rogue
government?
It is time to outlaw the private possession of automatic
weapons and to require a background check before issuance of a gun permit. If the NRA is smart, they will take the lead
in the movement to enact sensible gun laws.
But if they do not, they will incur the public scorn they will
deserve. It is all up to Barack
Obama. In the weeks ahead, we are going
to find out what kind of a leader we have elected.
