The normally humorous satirical news site “The Onion” has adopted a morbid tradition in recent years by running a story on the latest mass shooting in America with this headline: “No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens.”
What follows is a mention of the most recent shooting incident, and a number of fake quotes from people across the country who’ve grown numb to the daily horrors of mass shootings and gun violence in our society.
The truth, of course, is there is a “way to prevent this,” but by and large, we continue to choose not to do so.
The Uvalde, TX school shooting last year, in which 21 children were slain, finally moved Congress to pass the first gun control laws in America in three decades. It included new background checks, bans people convicted of serious domestic violence offenses from owning guns, and boosted funding for state crisis prevention and mental health programs.
That was seen as major progress, though it lacked a new assault weapons ban, gun training requirements, registration, or any other measures that gun control supporters say will make America safer and stop the violence we experience every day.
But those changes are not coming anytime with gun-enthusiast Republicans in control of the House — not even after the latest shocking episode in which children at a religious school in deep-red Tennessee were shot and killed Monday.
And those changes aren’t coming even as gun enthusiasts and so-called “Second Amendment” supporters fight every attempt at gun control law in the courts, and often winning.
Last year, New York lost its 109-year-old concealed carry firearms legislation thanks to a ruling by an activist, conservative Supreme Court with a far-too-literal take on the Second Amendment. Governor Kathy Hochul and the state legislature went into special session and passed a new concealed carry bill that they believed would meet legal muster — and that, too, is facing a court challenge.
All the while, right-wingers blame Hochul, Mayor Eric Adams and other Democrats for allowing crime to perpetrate in New York in recent years. Talk about laughable hypocrisy.
In our view, the only people who are “soft on crime” are those who fight every effort to institute any kind of gun control in America, and continue to enable criminals and disturbed individuals into obtaining weapons of mass death.
And until these right-wing softies come to their senses and support responsible gun control in America, The Onion’s satirical headline will be printed again — and that’s no laughing matter.
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