I wrote this as a letter to the Boston Globe after the 2016 New Hampshire primary. I honestly thought T***** didn’t have a chance at that point. But as P.T. Barnum pointed out, nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.
If it walks like a duck…
Well, the New Hampshire primary is over, and the deluge of political ads has ended for the moment. It is not as if those ads are aimed at us in Massachusetts anyway. It is like a conversation at the next table in a crowded restaurant. It isn’t directed at you, but you can’t help overhearing.
Still, I notice that every Republican ad, regardless of candidate, manages to get a dig in about the Obama administration and terrorism. Paris, San Bernardino and ISIS are mentioned constantly. Even Jeb Bush (who really should keep quiet about the Middle East given his family history) manages to list a plan to fight ISIS as part of his gubernatorial resume. To me the most interesting things about these ads are the names missing from their terrorist litanies: Newtown, Aurora, Charleston, Columbine. That list goes on much longer, but the very fact that we all know the tragic massacres that these names represent is both telling and depressing.
Why the omissions? Is it because the killers in those outrages didn’t have Muslim last names? The Sandy Hook Elementary School children were murdered by a rubber-room candidate who shouldn’t have been allowed access to a steak knife, much less an automatic weapon. Schools across the country now have regular lock-down drills to avoid being the next Columbine, Virginia Tech or Umpqua. I had more than a passing thought about Aurora, Colorado when I went to see “The Force Awakens”. Did I really want to see that movie enough to risk the possibility, however slight, that some stranger armed with an automatic rifle might burst in and kill my family? Terrorism is by definition violence aimed at forcing a society to change its behavior through fear. For must of us, the changes are small: We are a little more nervous about the kids going to school, attending large gatherings or even going to church. For the victims of mass shootings and their families and loved ones, the changes are huge and irreversible.
Still, none of the Republican candidates identify mass shootings of the home-grown variety as terrorism, even though these are much more common and deadly than anything perpetrated in this country by ISIS or Al Qaeda since 9/11. Any talk of an automatic weapons ban (or even cradle-to-grave firearms registration) is the third rail of Republican politics, and even candidates who know better do not dare make a stand. But it is tiresome listening to those who would lead us playing verbal Twister in order to avoid an obvious answer to a simple question. Q: Who needs an automatic weapon? A: People who want to kill lots of other people very quickly. Q: So why don’t we re-institute an automatic weapons ban? A: Um….the Second Amendment! But if one takes this interpretation of the Second Amendment to its nonsensical conclusion, ownership of an antitank weapon or even a tactical nuke should be legal as well. Less than 20% of the weapons used in mass shootings over the past 25 years were obtained illegally. Apparently the sellers were not concerned about how those weapons would be used, since they ended up in the hands of terrorists. Lets be honest, that’s what a mass shooter is, regardless of whether their last name is Farook, Harris or Lanza. I have never voted Republican in a presidential race. But if one of the innumerable Republican candidates displayed enough courage to say that he or she was dismayed by gun violence and was open to reasonable approaches to controlling it, that person could get my vote, and, I suspect, the votes of many others.
I was right about one thing here: Chalk 1/6/2021 up to domestic terrorism. Also, this was pre-Las Vegas, pre-Marjorie Stoneman Douglas, El Paso, and others too depressing to list, which continues to grow.