Two Years Since Newtown

Memorial in Newtown /Credit: AP (appeared on ABC News website)

Two years ago on December 14, 2012, a disturbed 20 year-old shot and killed his mother, then drove to Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, and killed 20 children and 6 adults before turning the Bushmaster rifle on himself.  This shooting was supposed to be the one that finally changed everything about the availability of guns in the United States and our national epidemic of gun violence.   It has not.  Thanks to a powerful gun lobby and fanatic "gun rights" advocates, very little has changed at the national level.  It is a disgraceful reminder of the power of special interest group money to prevent legislation for the common good from being enacted.

In the two years since Sandy Hook, there have been 21 deadly school shootings in the United States resulting in 37 deaths, including 5 of the shooters.  Mark Follman at Mother Jones analyzes the past two years of these attacks in a December 9 post and adds that "During the same period, there have been dozens of other gun incidents on school grounds that caused injuries, as well as seven additional cases where someone committed suicide with a firearm, but no one else died."

While action has been minimal to non-existent at the national level, there has been some good legislation passed at the state level - most recently, in the state of Washington voters approved a ballot initiative requiring universal background checks in November.  The Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence summarizes the progress: "In the past two years, states have seen historic and unprecedented progress in adopting gun laws to help keep communities safe from gun violence. A total of 99 new laws strengthening gun regulations have passed in 37 states nationwide since December 12, 2012, and 10 states have made major overhauls to their gun laws. 2014 was a remarkable year for smart gun laws, with California’s Gun Violence Restraining Order law, Washington State’s successful ballot initiative for universal background checks, and seven states adopting legislation to keep guns out of the hands of domestic violence abusers."  You can check out its 2014 Annual Gun Laws State Scorecard at http://gunlawscorecard.org/.

In addition to the successful ballot initiative in Washington, gun-control advocates saw a few other victories on Election Day. In Colorado, the two state senators who were recalled in 2013 by a gun lobby funded recall vote won back their seats.  As the LA Times reported: "...in a little-noticed footnote to Colorado’s closely watched gubernatorial and U.S. Senate races, the Democrats won back both of those seats, and it wasn’t at all close in either Pueblo or Colorado Springs."  And, in the midst of what was a Republican rout, the Democratic governors of Connecticut and Colorado won re-election in November despite gun lobby efforts to unseat them.  Connecticut and Colorado passed some of the toughest gun legislation in the country after the tragedies at Sandy Hook and Aurora.

In recent news, the gun lobby suffered a defeat Monday when, in what CNN analysts called "a small political miracle", the Senate approved Vivek Murthy as Surgeon General.  The gun lobby and their allies on the right had delayed his appointment for more than a year because he dared to say that gun violence is a public health issue.

Also on Monday, the families of nine people killed at Newtown filed suit against the maker and sellers of the Bushmaster AR-15 rifle.  The suit alleges "wrongful death and negligence" and seeks unspecified monetary damages.  "The complaint says the gun allows shooters to inflict unparalleled civilian carnage.  'In order to continue profiting from the sale of AR-15s, defendants chose to disregard the unreasonable risks the rifle posed outside of specialized, highly regulated institutions like the armed forces and law enforcement," the plaintiffs wrote in the complaint...A 2005 law shields gun manufacturers from most lawsuits over criminal use of their products, but it does include an exception for cases where companies should know a weapon is likely to be used in a way that risks injury to others. A lawyer for the Newtown families, Katie Mesner-Hage, said the lawsuit appears to be the first of its kind against a manufacturer to claim that exception." [AP/Huffington Post, Dec. 15]

The public is way ahead of the politicians on this issue with overwhelming majorities favoring common sense gun regulations.  Referring to the re-election of Governors Malloy (CT) and Hickenlooper (CO), the Americans for Principled Leadership website notes: "The public polls on gun safety reforms have been proven out in these two gubernatorial elections. By lopsided majorities the voting public strongly favored the gun safety legislation put in place after the Aurora movie theatre and Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings. It’s only a question of time before other states catch on."

Photo Credit: smartgunlaws.org (Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence)

Once the laws are on the books, we can expect attacks from the gun lobby in the courts - usually on the basis of the Second Amendment.  On the district court level, 2014 saw a number of victories for common sense gun laws,  In September. "U.S. District Court Judge John Darrah handed the gun sense movement yet another legal victory by upholding a local ordinance that prohibits military-style assault weapons and large capacity ammunition magazines (“LCMs”) in the city of Highland Park, Illinois. The decision is the most recent in a growing string of cases unanimously finding that prohibitions on assault weapons and LCMs do not infringe on the Second Amendment...This outcome marks the tenth major court victory for common sense gun laws in 2014. Despite a concerted effort by the gun lobby to challenge a host of reasonable firearm regulations, courts have rejected Second Amendment challenges to laws ranging from universal background checks and firearm registration to safe storage and restrictions on assault weapons and LCMs. The message from the courts is clear: the vast majority of sensible gun laws are fully compatible with the Second Amendment."  [Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, Sep. 29]

The positive state and local actions on gun regulation make these communities safer.  But other states have passed laws making guns more readily available and present.  Guns can be transported across state lines as easily as people, and action at a national level is also necessary. Unfortunately, after the midterm elections, action at the national level is now more unlikely than ever.

Then there is the question of the Supreme Court.  What will happen when these lower court cases make their inevitable way to the conservative-majority Supreme Court is anybody's guess.  SCOTUS' infamous District of Columbia vs. Heller 5-4 ruling in 2008 upheld a district court ruling that a Washington D.C. law banning handguns and requiring other firearms to be stored unloaded or locked was unconstitutional.  In so doing, they essentially declared that an individual unconnected to service in a militia had the right to "bear arms" - a first ever and unprecedented interpretation.

But the news at SCOTUS is not all bad.  In the court's last term (2013-4), "despite numerous invitations and opportunities, the justices went out of their way to avoid the right to bear arms.  Signs of this were clear...when the court in a 5–4 ruling upheld a major gun control law, the federal ban on 'straw' purchasing without so much as mentioning the Second Amendment." Justice Kennedy is apparently the swing vote on these issues and neither the conservative or liberal justices appeared willing to bet on which side he would vote if the Second Amendment were brought into the case.  "Kennedy seems increasingly less likely to be a solid vote for expansive Second Amendment rights. Indeed, twice [in the 2013-4] term he voted for expansive readings of gun control laws instead. For the NRA, so used to winning in statehouses around the country, this can't be good news." [Slate, June 19]

Related
Let's Repeal the Second Amendment [March 18, 2014]