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After a string of mass shootings, including those in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas, last year, I wrote a story with this headline: Why the president, Congress and the Supreme Court can’t – or won’t – stop mass shootings.
There have been some key developments in national gun policy in the intervening months:
- Congress actually did come together last June to pass the first new, major national gun legislation in decades, encouraging states to pass red flag laws – which through court orders can temporarily prevent individuals in crisis from accessing firearms – along with other measures tied to mental health and firearms.
- That same month, the Supreme Court invalidated a decades-old New York law governing gun licenses, pulling the rug out from under gun restrictions enacted in states and setting off a scramble to challenge these state laws.
- Following the midterm election, Republicans took control of the House of Representatives in January, ensuring no new gun restrictions are likely to be considered at the national level.
Despite that action by the previous Congress, and due to the action by the Supreme Court, the basic thrust of that story from last year holds as the US grapples with the aftermath of Monday’s Nashville, Tennessee, elementary school shooting in which three 9-year-old children and three adults were killed.
There’s little more the president can do about mass shootings. There’s nothing the new GOP-controlled Congress is likely to do to prevent mass shootings. And there’s reason to think state gun control laws could be in jeopardy.
That means this cycle of gun violence remains sad, predictable and permanent.
There have already been 16 shootings at US schools in the…
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