Senate observers erupted in online hoorays yesterday at the news of a tentative gun deal. From what I read, each digital hosanna came with an admonition, such as distinguished law professor, emeritus, Lawrence Tribe's: "This is a significant start. A journey of 1,000 miles must begin with a single step. This step wasn’t easy. Let’s cheer the Senate on, save for later the hand-wringing over how much remains to be done, how sad it is that even this took so long."
In his tweet, Prof. Tribe was not only cheering the tentative gun-control deal and admonishing acute disgruntlement over it, he was expressing optimism that more bipartisan agreements will follow. To each his own, as they say, yet while I find his cheerfulness a trifle misguided, I believe it's more important to understand precisely what the Senate's proposed legislation will accomplish, to put it charitably.
The agreement has five components, described by the Washington Post. Each is accompanied by a (my) caveat.
1. "A federal grant program would encourage states to implement red-flag laws." Here we get yet unworkable volunteerism and even more unworkable state-by-state control, not a federal mandate. Hence the states most in need of red-flag laws, such as Texas, won't pass them.
2. "[One} provision would prevent gun sales to domestic violence offenders other than spouses, closing what is often called the 'boyfriend loophole.'" Re: both violent boyfriends and wife-beating husbands, see #4.
3. "[The legislation would] allow authorities to keep guns away from people found by a judge to represent a potential threat to themselves or others." Many mass shooters have been characterized by neighbors as the "solitary, quiet type," thus they never found themselves before a judicial body.
4. [It clarifies] which gun sellers are required to register as federal firearms dealers and, thus, run background checks on customers." The provision excludes gun-show dealers — a whopper of a loophole.
5. "Federal criminal background checks for gun buyers younger than 21 would include a mandatory search of juvenile justice and mental health records." See caveat #3 pertaining to the justice system. As for searching mental health records, how many racists or ideologically driven mass shooters have sought therapeutic help to get "cured"?
In addition, any who have can always resort to a gun show purchase. Plus, the Post's Ruth Marcus has observed this: "The average age [of mass shooters] is 33 , according to the Rockefeller Institute of Government — [but] the tragic fact is that the perpetrators of school shootings tend to be young, current or former students. A Post database of all school shootings found that the median age of the shooters is 16."
Perhaps the proposed legislation will prevent one or two mass shootings throughout the unendurable future of their persistence. That in itself would be cause for jubilation. But let's face it, until weapons of war and magazine loads of 100 are federally banned, mass slaughter will remain a singular feature of American life — or rather, American death.