Will gun control enter America’s political debate?
The background
America is reeling from a movie theater shooting that left 12 people dead and 58 wounded. James Holmes, 24, entered a midnight screening of new Batman film The Dark Knight Rises in Aurora, Colorado on Friday 20th July, armed with weapons including a military-style assault rifle. The former postgraduate student detonated gas canisters and began shooting as cinema-goers attempted to flee.
Police subsequently discovered Holmes had rigged his home with potentially deadly bomb traps. He was arrested soon after the mass killing and is reported to be not co-operating.
In the wake of the tragedy, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg called on President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney to take the lead on gun control. But in election year, will either Democrats or the GOP really be willing to bring weapons legislation into the debate?
The presidential candidates must “stand up and say once and for all, yes, they feel terrible, yes it’s a tragedy, yes we have great sympathy for the families, but it’s time to stand up and do something,” New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg told CBS News.
Shootings will happen again in America
In addition to the horror and sadness following the shootings, there is also “the shared American knowledge that, beyond any doubt, this will happen again, and that it will happen in America many, many times before it occurs anywhere else,” wrote James Fallows at The Atlantic. The problem is that “we will not change the circumstances that allow such episodes to recur”, said Fallows, and this is why the rest of the world considers America “dangerous, and mad”.
Someone must stand up for gun control
“OK. Guns don’t kill people. But in Aurora, the undoubtedly unhinged person who struck had four of them,” said Judith Miller at The Daily Beast. Miller argued that most people would in fact welcome a “call-to-arms” against combat weapons. “When will our politicians be moral and principled enough to do more than utter empty platitudes and challenge the gun lobby on what should be a no-brainer?” asked Miller.
Gun control won’t enter political debate
There is a compelling reason gun control is unlikely to become an issue during the 2012 presidential elections, said Peter Grier at The Christian Science Monitor: according to many polls, “over the last decade or so there has been a pronounced shift in national attitudes toward guns, with more Americans lining up on the gun rights side of the issue.”
America must not let fear reign
After the shootings there has been “the usual mad, sickening dash” for people to make their opinions heard, wrote Alexandra Petri at The Washington Post; “to talk about gun restrictions and safeguards and drag in ideologies and posit dark theories about the malign influence of film.” What ordinary Americans need to remember is that this terrible act is the exception, not the norm. “Fear creeps in,” said Petri, making people afraid as they go about their daily activities; “it would be awful if we let that happen”.
