The Monday morning following a weekend of terror in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, we called on Vice President Mike Pence and top congressional leaders to immediately convene a meeting, draft legislation to protect Americans and move the country forward within 21 days.
That time frame comes to a close tomorrow, and national lawmakers are no closer to addressing an epidemic of gun violence than they were before the two shootings earlier this month. That is unacceptable.
Congress must not let this moment pass. There is danger in doing so — the further the country moves from the events of that weekend, the more the issue and the potential for progress diminishes.
An unfortunate irony of mass shootings is they hold the public’s attention while accounting for a small fraction of total gun deaths in the United States. Therefore, if Congress lets go of this momentum, it would be letting go of an opportunity to address the lesser-known tragedies of suicide (the largest percentage of gun deaths), domestic violence and urban homicides.
The further the country moves from the events of that weekend, the more the issue and the potential for progress diminishes.
So what have lawmakers done the past three weeks?
Some have issued statements, a few have shown a willingness to collaborate on gun policy but no one has acted. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi hasn’t brought her house back in session, insisting “the focus now has to be on (Senate Majority Leader) Mitch McConnell.” McConnell, on the other hand, says he’ll take up the issue in September. Yet, his standard position is to only bring legislation to the floor if it already has majority support.
In the meantime, most have been occupied by their August recess. To be fair, it’s not a vacation; members lend their aid to constituent casework, visit foreign powers and gather information from their districts, among other things. That work matters, but most of it is designed to solve politicians’ own political problems, not the problems of the nation. It amounts to motion, not forward movement.
What would it take for Pence, McConnell or Pelosi to bring their parties back from recess? Surely, the worst of terrors rise to that occasion — Pearl Harbor and Sept. 11 come to mind. But as the national significance of an event drops, where is the cutoff for immediate action? On Wednesday, President Donald Trump said gun deaths were a public health emergency. Is that not enough?
We sense the public would rather not wait. According to the latest NBC News-Wall Street Journal survey taken in the wake of the El Paso and Dayton shootings, 89% of Americans have favorable support for expanded background checks, 76% favor “red flag” laws and 75% favor a voluntary buyback program. Additionally, 62% “strongly” or “somewhat” support a ban on semi-automatic weapons.
Whether those are the right policies — or whether the federal government, rather than the states, is best suited to tackle such legislation — is open for discussion. But lawmakers aren’t even having that discussion, despite the clear support from their constituents to start one.
Frankly, the same could be said of other slow-burning crises in the country, such as immigration at the southern border, rising health care costs and the ever-expanding national debt. Neglecting to tackle these issues is simply a failure of leadership inside the Capitol, and it’s time Congress got back to governing the country as the Constitution demands.