What US President Joe Biden can say about the massacre in Texas, he has already said. Multiple: “I’m so fed up. We have to take action. When in God’s name are we going to stand up to the gun lobby?”
Desperate words from the most powerful man in the land. In fact, there is very little Biden can do. He lacks the necessary clear majorities in Parliament. On his visit to Uvalde, Texas, he therefore wants to offer comfort and show compassion. It should not be the occasion for political demands that would be pointless anyway.
Hardly any movement in the public debate
Even after the recent bloody deed, there has been little movement in the public debate. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell says, “It’s sickening to see innocent young life being snuffed out.”
Legend:
In Uvalde, Texas, people mourn the dead children.
Reuters
But Mitch McConnell has delayed and prevented any tightening of gun laws during his more than thirty-year Senate career. It is considered – minimal – progress that he now at least agreed to hold talks with the Democrats at the weekend.
This is not about serious restrictions on gun rights, but merely about preventing even known criminals from being able to acquire guns – or about taking guns away from psychopaths.
Increasing desperation
No wonder advocates of tightening are increasingly desperate. According to Democratic Senator Chris Murphy: «What are we doing? What are we doing?” he repeatedly asked his Republican Senate colleagues rhetorically: “Why are we sitting here if we are not willing to solve an existential problem in the United States.”
A majority of the population, which is very clear immediately after massacres such as in Uvalde, calls for restrictions on gun rights. But the Republican Party is far from having this majority.
On the one hand, because the gun lobby finances their election campaigns with tens of millions of dollars. On the other hand, people are fixated on the USA as a Wild West country, where guns belong in every household like bread or milk. Typical of this attitude is Kristi Noem, the governor of South Dakota.
“In South Dakota, even grandmothers are armed”
Before she had her own hunting license, she accompanied her grandmother on hunts. Yes, in South Dakota grandmothers are also armed. It is also constantly repeated that the weapons themselves are not dangerous at all, but only bad people with weapons. That’s why the good guys really have to arm themselves.
Nothing in the entire US Constitution is more important to some Republicans than the Second Amendment, which prohibits restrictions on the right to own and bear arms.
Schools should become fortresses
These circles shed crocodile tears in view of the many victims, as did former President Donald Trump on Friday at the annual meeting of the National Rifle Association, the firearms lobby NRA, in a seemingly cynical staging when he listed the names of all the children killed in Uvalde.
Politically, however, he and his ilk only conclude from the never-ending series of massacres that the schools should be converted into fortresses. Teachers should carry guns, every school needs security guards, bars, walls, armored doors, metal detectors.
Ideological worlds lie between the different ideas. The gun advocates have the power to enforce theirs.