As Americans debate gun control measures following the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, some politicians are using the tragedy to advance their agenda against firearms.
One day after the shooting, Democrats began using the tragedy as a vehicle to push for the types of policies they were already wanting. That effort was evident when Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) urged voters who want more strict gun control to vote for Democrats in the upcoming midterm elections.
Senate Democrats have failed to advance their wider-reaching federal gun control legislation by falling short of a 60-vote filibuster threshold, which is needed for bills to go to the floor for a vote.
Also on May 25, Schumer blocked legislation, known as the Luke and Alex School Safety Act, that supporters say could help prevent school shootings. The bill would require the Department of Homeland Security to establish a federal clearinghouse on the best school safety practices. The bill was introduced by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and two of his Republican colleagues in January 2021.
“@SenSchumer blocked this common-sense legislation in favor of his partisan agenda,” Johnson wrote on Twitter. In a separate tweet, he added, “Dems aren’t looking for solutions, they want wedge issues that they hope will keep them in power. Sick.”
For former President Barak Obama, it seemed more important for him to push his narratives surrounding racism than to condemn the Uvalde shooter.
“As we grieve the children of Uvalde today, we should take time to recognize that two years have passed since the murder of George Floyd under the knee of a police officer,” Obama wrote on Twitter.
“In the aftermath of his murder, a new generation of activists rose up to channel their anguish into organized action, launching a movement to raise awareness of systemic racism and the need for criminal justice and police reform.”
On June 2, President Joe Biden, in a speech on gun control, declared that the Second Amendment “is not absolute.” The National Rifle Association (NRA), rebuked the president’s speech, saying, “All that the President repeatedly proposes will only infringe on the rights of those law-abiding who have never, and will never, commit a crime.”
Gun Control
One of the main arguments of the gun control lobby is that people don’t need guns to defend themselves since the police protect them. Moreover, as many socialists would say, people don’t need guns because their government is their greatest protector.
However, history tells us that unarmed people can be defenseless if their governments turn against them. The most infamous example in history involves the Nazis, who used the weapons laws of the Weimar Republic to seize all the guns of the Jews before starting to murder them in 1941, which marked the start of The Holocaust.
