It’s not just the usual outrage on the need for gun control after a horrendous shooting. It is a wide-eyed, angry, uninformed, hateful, condescending, morally superior political cascade that will probably help boost gun sales, maybe making it still easier for the next killer to get one.
The killer in this episode, someone who did just about everything bad you can think of in life, stood in front of the congregation of a small-town Baptist church in Texas and shot everyone who made a sound, including babies that cried. Twenty-six people died. Two good guys chased the killer; he crashed his truck and shot himself to death after being wounded by one of the pursuers.
“As my colleagues go to sleep tonight, they may need to think about whether the political support of the gun industry is worth the blood that flows endlessly onto the floors of American churches, elementary schools, movie theaters and city streets,” said Sen. Chris Murphy, D.-Conn., in the first part of an interesting, blistering self-indictment. “The terrifying fact is that no one is safe so long as Congress chooses to do absolutely nothing in the face of this epidemic.”
Note that this politician is blatantly saying that those not wanting the laws he wants have been bought out by big money even as they know people will die. He is obviously pointing a finger at the National Rifle Association, which is not powerful so much because of gun-maker dollars as because of millions of citizens who happen to vote. That’s known as free speech and democracy. In financial terms, The Washington Examiner reported a couple of years ago, the lobby of the dairy industry spends twice as much as the NRA.