It was heart-breaking to watch the smartphone videos of terrified Las Vegas concert-goers scrambling for cover as a torrent of bullets literally rained down on them, the staccato gunfire going on and on.
There’s a feeling of helplessness as we read about the lives abruptly ended and try to wrap our head around what could have motivated someone to stage a massacre that killed or wounded some 600 people.
Just like we futilely try to understand how 49 people could be cut down in an Orlando nightclub, or 26 people — 20 of them children under the age of 7 — can have their lives cut short at a Connecticut school.
Politicians offer “warm condolences” and “thoughts and prayers,” but their “thoughts” don’t stop bullets from carving up children in Sandy Hook Elementary and their “prayers” don’t save people in Vegas like Chris Roybal, a 28-year-old veteran of Afghanistan who was shot in the chest, or Sonny Melton, who died when a bullet ripped through his back while shielding his wife from the barrage.
It’s time to start judging these politicians by their actions, and their actions have gone against the wishes of the vast majority of Americans and enabled the kind of bloodshed we have seen too often in this country.
A Pew Research survey earlier this year found that 89 percent of gun owners and non-gun owners alike support prohibiting the mentally ill from buying a gun, yet in February Congress removed a restriction on that very thing, with Sens. Orrin Hatch and Mike Lee, and Reps. Rob Bishop, Mia Love, Chris Stewart and Jason Chaffetz all voting in favor.
In the same poll, 84 percent of Americans supported requiring background checks on firearm purchases at gun shows and private sales, yet last year, the Senate defeated a measure that would have done that. Hatch and Lee helped kill the proposal.
The House was planning a vote on a bill to loosen restrictions on the sale of gun silencers, which have been tightly regulated since 1934 and aren’t really “arms” under the 2nd Amendment parlance, at all, but do, according to manufacturers, reduce recoil and allow the faster, more accurate firing of semi-automatic weapons.
Last year, Donald Trump Jr. visited SilencerCo, a Utah-based silencer maker, to test out the add-ons and promised his daddy would sign a bill into law removing restrictions. In June, a vote on the bill was postponed after a gunman shot up Republican House members and staff practicing for a congressional baseball game. This week, House Speaker Paul Ryan pushed off any vote again after the Vegas slaughter.
When a similar bill passed the House in 2016, Bishop, Love, Stewart and Chaffetz, who has since resigned from the House, voted for it.
Granted, none of those proposals would have stopped the Las Vegas murderer, who, it appears based on what we currently know, bought his guns legally.
That’s not the point.
You can’t stop the last massacre, you can only try to stop the next one, and we know the next one is coming sooner than later.
You can also start doing something to stem the bloodshed from the more than 33,000 Americans who die from gunshots each year. The tally includes homicides, suicides and accidental shootings. In Utah alone, we now lose one person a day on average. That’s 10 times as many as are killed by drunk drivers, but you see where the Utah Legislature focuses its attention.
A few state lawmakers have, to their credit, taken some minor steps recently, mainly focused on suicide and domestic abuse.
Last session, the National Rifle Association’s lobbyist threatened an all-out campaign against Sen. Curt Bramble, R-Provo, because Bramble was co-sponsoring a bill intended to keep domestic abusers from having access to guns and making it a Class A misdemeanor to have possession of a gun during an act of domestic violence. Bramble, to his credit, threw the NRA flunky out of his office.
The state is also in the midst of doing an in-depth study on the causes and methods of suicide — about two-thirds of which nationally involve firearms and account for nearly two-thirds of gun deaths in the country. The NRA initially opposed that study, as well.
And Rep. Steve Eliason, R-Sandy, has sponsored legislation to encourage gun trigger locks and educate gun shop owners about the warning signs of a potentially suicidal customer.
These guys deserve some credit for doing what they can to move the issue forward in a pro-gun state.
Our federal delegation, meantime, is a different story. When it’s time for re-election, these same members of Utah’s congressional delegation will undoubtedly trot out their sterling ratings from the NRA and hope nobody demands they explain the body count of innocent victims of gun violence during their time in office.
No matter how many thoughts and prayers they offer, I’ll use this space to do what I can to ensure voters know their record and can hold them accountable on Election Day.