Idaho’s congressional delegation lacks the courage to protect children from gun violence

Another killing spree, this time in an elementary school in Texas, has turned the Idaho spotlight on its congressional delegation of Risch, Crapo, Fulcher and Simpson. If the spotlight can find them, that is. Ever wonder why you don’t hear of the town hall meetings our public officials representing us in Washington seldom or ever hold these days? As accomplices to the shootings by their failure to act, they are afraid of their constituents who will hold them publicly accountable.

They think so little of your ability to think through what might work to halt the carnage in our classroom. They blame, as Congressman Mike Simpson did in the recent statement he released from the safety of his office, the mental health of these killers. (Even before you get to the point of his argument, how brazen of Simpson to blame gun violence in America on the mental health condition of these shooters when his party has over the years stood steadfast in its opposition to expanded mental health programs. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott recently slashed funding for mental health programs.)

More to the point, does Simpson really expect us to believe the problem is mental health when mental illness exists in every nation on the planet, but we are the only one whose schools are killing fields with easy access to semi-automatic weapons?

Calls for background checks, moving the age up to 21 before you can buy a gun and restricting the sales of AR-style semi-automatic weapons have fallen on deaf ears in Republican caucuses. The NRA and other gun-loving extremist groups take no prisoners, and Idaho’s congressional delegation knows exactly how to stay in their good graces. Accept no compromise, no matter how realistic, no matter that most Americans favor legislation to deal with gun violence. Blame gun violence on anything but the gun that kills.

After each deadly shooting, Idaho’s pols resort to what Donald Trump perfected during his presidency. Psychologists call it “the illusory truth effect” — repeat what is false often enough and people will come to believe it’s the truth.

The Republican playbook is loaded with excuses why legislating against certain kinds of guns and certain kinds of risky people who apply for them won’t work. It really doesn’t matter how many kids are slaughtered in classrooms like Uvalde’s. The NRA and its subservient politicians manipulate their followers into believing it will do no good to take certain guns off the market, even though many countries with such laws experience little gun violence.

What drives these politicians to ignore solutions to gun violence? It’s about saving their own political skins at the ballot box. It’s about staving off primary challengers at any cost. It’s about building up that pension which few of their constituents these days enjoy. It’s about hanging out in the nation’s capital with all the perks of office as they are wined and dined by NRA lobbyists.

So what are our politicians and their staffs doing in the aftermath of another school massacre like Uvalde? More than likely, they rehearse how they will answer reporters’ questions about their refusal to act. They issued press releases expressing their heartfelt sorrow for what has happened and then shift the blame from easy access to guns and ammunition in any direction except where it belongs — squarely on Idaho politicians who lie and equivocate about solutions to gun violence in America.

Do they even care about Idaho’s kids? Do they not think it can happen here? Do they not think a crazed teenager may turn an assault rifle on an Idaho school? What then? Will they still parrot bogus answers from NRA crib sheets to parents who demand answers about why their kids are not safe in school?

Their flimsy excuses do not hold up to the light of day. Unrestricted access to guns and ammunition is the problem. Only the U.S. and its lack of reasonable gun legislation allow the continued slaughter of its citizens. Politicians who do nothing are cowards who hide behind a Second Amendment that never has been litigated to prove no restrictions are possible.

In a recent New York Times op-ed, two former law clerks, one of whom worked with Justice Antonin Scalia, pulled quotes from Scalia’s Heller decision on guns and the Second Amendment.

“Even Justice Scalia’s footnote in the Heller decision says that states could take reasonable actions in restricting gun usage including ‘laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms as well as bans on carrying weapons in sensitive places, like schools.’ It recognized the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of dangerous and unusual weapons.”

By the time you read this, we may have this latest mass shooting in our rearview mirror. Or will there have been yet another shooting? We have not seen the last of it, which makes it so imperative that we not allow this latest slaughter to pass from our minds. It’s time to engage public officials in restaurants where they eat, in stores where they shop, near their homes and at their offices paid for by our tax dollars. Engage them wherever they do business, especially at the Chamber of Commerce where they hold themselves up as members of a Congress that makes laws for the benefit of its constituents. Do not allow them to pass you on the street without addressing their monumental lack of courage in dealing with America’s killing fields in its schools.

The late Congressman John Lewis who threw himself in harm’s way to rally support for civil rights legislation called it “making good trouble.” In recent years, the right wing in American politics has demonstrated how the power of confrontation highlights attention to their causes. Meanwhile, the rest of us sit back quietly on the sidelines. We must put a stop to these random killings in our schools and it just may take confrontational tactics our brethren on the right employ so well. It’s time to make “good trouble.”

This story was originally published June 5, 2022 at 4:00 AM.