From: http://www.miamiherald.com/458/story/78958.html
Posted on Thu, Apr. 19, 2007
It was not a good week for the NRA
BY FRED GRIMM
[email protected]
The enlightenment that comes with a human massacre prevailed Wednesday in Tallahassee. The so-called guns-at-work bill was voted down in a House of Representatives committee.
A similar bill had faltered Tuesday in Georgia, another state where the legislature usually functions as a franchise of the National Rifle Association. Legislators in either state couldn't bring themselves to parrot the NRA's bizarre arguments about the urgent need of employees to keep guns handy in cars parked at their workplaces. Not this week. Not after 32 gun murders and a suicide on Virginia Tech's campus.
In Georgia, the Senate Rules Committee chairman told The Atlanta Constitution that, given the horrors the morning before, ``This is not the time to take up a bill like that.''
BAD TIMING
A similar sensibility prevailed in the Florida House, knowing that the more-guns-the-better fantasy would sound particularly fatuous just two days after the bloody reality of Virginia Tech.
But the temporary setback of an NRA initiative should not give anyone hope that this latest school killing spree will inspire saner gun laws. The guns-at-work bills were already up against the fierce opposition of business lobbies and powerful corporations in both states.
The Florida Chamber of Commerce released a statewide poll Monday finding that 56 percent of Florida voters opposed the premise behind the guns-at-work bill.
All that, yet it took an unspeakable carnage in Virginia to stave off the NRA charge. And there was some thought in Atlanta that the bill might be resurrected before the legislature adjourns there on Friday. Jennifer Krell Davis of the Florida Chamber of Commerce said she was still worried that someone would similarly sneak a Senate-approved version of the guns-at-work bill into the Florida House amid the last-minute chaos. ''It's still out there,'' she told me Wednesday.
It's as if legislators figure that by Friday, four murdered professors, 28 dead students and a gun-wielding psycho killer will have faded from public consciousness. Just in time to reconcile with the NRA.
JUST GUN SMOKE
Politicians know that talk of tougher gun laws in the U.S. after workplace massacres, school massacres, restaurant massacres dissipate as fast as gun smoke.
They shrugged off the ritual murders of five little Amish school girls in Pennsylvania last October as the price they pay to avoid the enmity of the gun lobby. Why would the slaughter in Virginia this week make them rethink the gun laws? Thirty-two murders in Blacksburg is no worse than Columbine plus inflation.
Other western nations after such mass murders tighten gun laws. Britain, which bans sales of the kind of pistols purchased by that mentally skewed student in Virginia, suffered only 46 gun homicides last year -- a total within easy reach of an industrious mass killer in the U.S. The international press suggested this week that our reckless shoot-first embrace of firearms explained why we leaped, guns-ablazing, into Iraq, another place where the gun culture is in full bloom.
After a couple of minor setbacks, the gun lobby has begun shooting back at its critics with a wild, new logic: The danger evidenced in Virginia was caused by too few guns on campus. If we had more beer-crazed pistol-packing frat boys, it would be worth the risk that they'd occasionally off one another, their girlfriends or their professors on the off chance that one of them might plug the next campus mass murderer.
Enlightenment didn't last long.
Posted on Thu, Apr. 19, 2007
It was not a good week for the NRA
BY FRED GRIMM
[email protected]
The enlightenment that comes with a human massacre prevailed Wednesday in Tallahassee. The so-called guns-at-work bill was voted down in a House of Representatives committee.
A similar bill had faltered Tuesday in Georgia, another state where the legislature usually functions as a franchise of the National Rifle Association. Legislators in either state couldn't bring themselves to parrot the NRA's bizarre arguments about the urgent need of employees to keep guns handy in cars parked at their workplaces. Not this week. Not after 32 gun murders and a suicide on Virginia Tech's campus.
In Georgia, the Senate Rules Committee chairman told The Atlanta Constitution that, given the horrors the morning before, ``This is not the time to take up a bill like that.''
BAD TIMING
A similar sensibility prevailed in the Florida House, knowing that the more-guns-the-better fantasy would sound particularly fatuous just two days after the bloody reality of Virginia Tech.
But the temporary setback of an NRA initiative should not give anyone hope that this latest school killing spree will inspire saner gun laws. The guns-at-work bills were already up against the fierce opposition of business lobbies and powerful corporations in both states.
The Florida Chamber of Commerce released a statewide poll Monday finding that 56 percent of Florida voters opposed the premise behind the guns-at-work bill.
All that, yet it took an unspeakable carnage in Virginia to stave off the NRA charge. And there was some thought in Atlanta that the bill might be resurrected before the legislature adjourns there on Friday. Jennifer Krell Davis of the Florida Chamber of Commerce said she was still worried that someone would similarly sneak a Senate-approved version of the guns-at-work bill into the Florida House amid the last-minute chaos. ''It's still out there,'' she told me Wednesday.
It's as if legislators figure that by Friday, four murdered professors, 28 dead students and a gun-wielding psycho killer will have faded from public consciousness. Just in time to reconcile with the NRA.
JUST GUN SMOKE
Politicians know that talk of tougher gun laws in the U.S. after workplace massacres, school massacres, restaurant massacres dissipate as fast as gun smoke.
They shrugged off the ritual murders of five little Amish school girls in Pennsylvania last October as the price they pay to avoid the enmity of the gun lobby. Why would the slaughter in Virginia this week make them rethink the gun laws? Thirty-two murders in Blacksburg is no worse than Columbine plus inflation.
Other western nations after such mass murders tighten gun laws. Britain, which bans sales of the kind of pistols purchased by that mentally skewed student in Virginia, suffered only 46 gun homicides last year -- a total within easy reach of an industrious mass killer in the U.S. The international press suggested this week that our reckless shoot-first embrace of firearms explained why we leaped, guns-ablazing, into Iraq, another place where the gun culture is in full bloom.
After a couple of minor setbacks, the gun lobby has begun shooting back at its critics with a wild, new logic: The danger evidenced in Virginia was caused by too few guns on campus. If we had more beer-crazed pistol-packing frat boys, it would be worth the risk that they'd occasionally off one another, their girlfriends or their professors on the off chance that one of them might plug the next campus mass murderer.
Enlightenment didn't last long.
