Friday’s massacre of 20 first graders and seven staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School came the day after decisive action on guns in two state capitals: Legislators in Michigan and Ohio voted on Thursday to loosen gun rules. In Michigan, remarkably, the vote was to allow concealed weapons in schools, while Ohio lawmakers voted to permit them in cars parked at the State House garage.
Some advocates of restraints on guns who’ve reached a boiling point declared over the weekend that America apparently loves its guns more than its children. Such was the desperation in the voice of those with no more tolerance for equivocation on the issue, who hope that the gunning down of a classroom of six- and seven-year-olds will be the tipping point that the slaughter of teenage high school students, or those of random ages at movie theaters or malls, or the attempted assassination of a member of Congress in a shopping center parking lot, were not.
Perhaps. But don’t bet on it.
And there is no need to look beyond the bucolic byways of Newtown itself for evidence that some Americans are in no mood for anyone grabbing at their guns, even those designed for warfare and not a deer hunt in the woods. The Times reports this morning that the Connecticut town that was the scene of the country’s most recent mass killing had been struggling with efforts to rein in the use of automatic weapons at shooting ranges that have proliferated in recent years. “These are not normal guns that people need,” said Joel Faxson, a hunter and member of the town’s police commission, who pushed for new restrictions. “These are guns for an arsenal, and you get lunatics like this guy who goes into a school fully armed and protected to take return fire. We live in a town, not in a war.”
But a war has been underway for years over the rightful place of guns in American society. It’s been very one-sided, however, with the gun lobby winning most of the battles. Gary Wills, who holds a mirror up to American society as brilliantly as any public intellectual of our time, offers this searing meditation on how the gun has become a “reverenced god” in this country.
New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg urges President Obama and national leaders to take action and enact tough new laws. But the emphatic implorings of the mayor of the nation’s largest city register as a foreign language across the vast swaths of the country where gun rights are sacrosanct and talk of limiting access to them invites the full weight of the country’s powerful gun-rights lobby.
The leading voice of that opposition to even the mildest restraint on weapons of mass destruction, the National Rifle Association, went into bunker mode, declining any comment on the shootings. The group’s Twitter feed has gone quiet since Friday. One of the last tweets, from Thursday, offered the apparently good news that Florida (the state that brought vigilante “justice” to Trayvon Martin) “nears 1 million permits for concealed weapons.” Not one of the 31 US senators identified as pro-gun rights was willing to come on Meet The Press yesterday to take questions from David Gregory.
But being shamed into silence in the early days of raw anguish and pain following the shootings is hardly the same thing as waving the white flag. The gun lobby is no doubt quietly regrouping and planning a way to respond without conceding any ground.
President Obama traveled yesterday to Newtown, where he spoke at last night’s interfaith memorial service. After saying this is the fourth time he has had to delivered words to the country as president following a mass shooting, Obama seemed to set the stage for a fight to combat guns that he — and others in Washington — have avoided until now. “We can’t accept events like this as routine,” Obama said at at the service. “I’ll use whatever power this office holds” to support efforts ”aimed at preventing more tragedies like this.”
The Wall Street Journal reports that the Obama administration is considering a ban on high-capacity magazines, ammunition that was outlawed in the 1994 assault weapons ban that Congress let expire in 2004. A group of parents in Newtown have formed a group to push for new gun laws, Reuters reports.
To make headway, the parents, the president, and members of Congress who are ready to take action will have to win the day over people like their Newtown neighbor Scott Ostrosky, the owner of a local gun range. Channelling the most well-worn and mindless of NRA talking points in place of the official gun lobby leaders who were unwilling to come forward themselves, he told the Times, “A gun didn’t kill all those children, a disturbed man killed all those children.”
We’ll soon see whether the country is finally ready to put that tired line to rest, along with the bodies being prepared for burial in Connecticut.
–MICHAEL JONAS
BEACON HILL
Attorney General Martha Coakley sat down with Keller@Large to talk about the Cahill verdict, politics, and her future.
MUNICIPAL MATTERS
The Globe rolls out an ambitious five-part series taking an in-depth look at life in the troubled Bowdoin-Geneva neighborhood of Dorchester. Here is yesterday’s first part and today’s second installment.
Not everyone is happy with the search for a new city manager in Cambridge that ended up tapping the guy who’s been the No. 2 city official for years.
Boston Mayor Tom Menino tells the New York Times he’s still up for the job.
A Lawrence firefighter is fired following a dispute over his disability, asthma, the Eagle-Tribune reports.
Gloucester Mayor Carolyn Kirk proposes spending $1 million on water and sewer improvements, the Gloucester Times reports.
The Brockton city solicitor is asking the water and sewer department to look into a 20-year contract with a private water provider to see if there are violations that could enable the city to get out of the last 10 years.
Fitchburg city councilors look at increasing the mayor’s salary, which currently stands at $60,000 per year.
The manner in which the Fall River Diocese shuttered New Bedford’s St. John the Baptist Church, the oldest Portuguese parish in North America, is causing some bad blood with parishioners who were trying to keep the church open.
NEWTOWN SHOOTING
The Washington Post looks at the key players in the gun control debate. Gun rights advocates are on the defensive. Cardinal Sean O’Malley calls for new gun laws, NECN reports. John Rosenthal of Stop Handgun Violence discusses the guns used by Adam Lanza with Jim Braude on NECN’s Broadside.
Time’s Adam Cohen says compromise between the two opposing sides on gun control is the only way any progress will be made. Pro-gun Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia says it’s time to move beyond rhetoric on gun control, Politico reports. The Atlantic pushes back on the notion that Washington has ducked a tough conversation on guns, arguing that federal gun policy reflects a national pro-gun consensus.
The Eagle-Tribune looks back at Nancy Lanza’s time in Kingston, New Hampshire.
Schools across the South Shore have tightened security in the wake of the massacre.
NATIONAL POLITICS/WASHINGTON
House Speaker John Boehner says he would consider raising tax rates on people making more than $1 million as long as significant spending cuts are made, NPR reports (via WBUR).
The Globe takes a look at John Kerry’s long history in diplomatic affairs. The National Review resurrects a 2004 piece about the then-presidential nominee that paints the would-be secretary of state nominee as the anti-Reagan. Meanwhile, Michael Dukakis may get the nod to fill Kerry’s seat until the special election is held. The Wall Street Journal sizes up the scramble for Kerry’s seat. Slate’s David Weigel is already saying a Scott Brown comeback bid “would probably fail.”
You can’t buy love, but access, apparently, is worth $177,000. A new study finds that’s how much a lobbyist’s connections to a legislator is worth to the lobbyist’s firm.
BUSINESS/ECONOMY
Catch-22: Children of the working poor are themselves working more to help families make ends meet, according to a new report, and as a result they are falling further behind in educational attainment and gaining the skills needed to get out poverty. It is, nevertheless, also increasingly difficult for young people to land jobs, say two other new reports.
Google is close to ending a two-year anti-trust investigation by the federal government. The settlement will leave the company largely unscathed.
EDUCATION
The mayor of Lewiston, Maine, says “lazy” welfare recipients and their children are a drain on his city’s school system and he specifically mentioned people from Brockton as being part of the problem. He urged the state’s legislature to make changes in the welfare program.
ENERGY/ENVIRONMENT
The Cape Cod Times wonders if the report on the declining quality of Cape Cod Bay will spur new regulations on issues like wastewater treatment.
MEDIA
The Boston Globe and WBZ-TV enter into a content sharing agreement.
Paul Starobin, in The New Republic, says Marty Baron’s “Boston Globe-ization of the Washington Post” will involve a high-level commitment to local news coverage.