A Loss for America: The Failure of the Background Check Bill

A special guest post by Matt Polen

I don’t consider myself a political person by any stretch of the imagination. I’m not particularly well-informed, nor am I ill-informed. I am merely what most call – an American. I watch the news and glean from it what I can. Admittedly, the news I watch is not “fair and balanced” and would probably be referred to as “the liberal media.” I am OK with that. I can admit that my leanings are considerably more to the left and therefore more aligned with CNN and NBC than the hateful propaganda of Fox. I love watching The Daily Show, and the little snippets I see of Fox News on there are enough to let me know what I am missing and to form the opinion that it is nothing of import. Scare tactics, bullying, hatemongering and agenda-pushing are not my cup of tea.

All of this is not to say though, that I don’t have strong views on issues that are politicized or political in nature. Again, I am an American, and that means that I can have strong views on things about which I may not know much. This may not be a solely American trait, but I certainly see us ranking higher in this skill than say math or geography compared with other nations. Opinions are like quicksand. They are deep and murky; you can get stuck in them and before you know it they are pulling you under. Some opinions are popular and easy to define and defend. Others are not so popular and are challenging and complex. What seems obvious is not always so. Sometimes the popular opinion is wrong – it is the path of least resistance, it is simply the most utilitarian, it benefits you personally – and that is when tough decisions need to be made.

The people we elect to make these tough decisions, the ones that affect not only our own lives but those of all those around us and, at times, the world at large, are our elected officials. These people represent us. We entrust them with the very ability to be our voice when the sound of 1 in 100 million is not enough. They are, as their very title suggests, our REPRESENTATIVES. When every individual voice cannot be heard, they represent the masses, their constituents. Constituent is defined as a person who authorizes another to act on his or her behalf, as a voter in a district represented by an elected official.

Today’s failed vote to expand background checks on gun owners or potential future gun owners is a failure of our elected officials to represent us. In polls leading up to the vote, the numbers were showing quite clearly – between 60% to 90% - that Americans supported this proposed legislation. And indeed they should. Who in their right mind is opposed to keeping guns out of the hands of criminals and the mentally ill? You can make all the arguments you want about our 2nd Amendment rights and the slippery slope that this represents or that criminals will find ways to have guns, and to that I say go for it. We regularly have curtails on laws – even the most fundamental of them. Freedom of speech is one of the most widely protected and integral tenets of our freedoms, but you still cannot yell ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theater. But the right to enter that same theater with a loaded weapon, that we cannot curtail? And the argument that criminals will always find a way to get their hands on weapons? If the reason to not pass a law is because criminals will break it, then why have any laws at all? Isn’t the very reason that we have laws because people kept doing the same thing over and over again – that thing being something that we as a society deemed unfavorable and therefore relied on our REPRESENTATIVES to create a law prohibiting it?

The idea that if you outlaw guns then only outlaws will have guns is preposterous on so many levels, but the fact is that it doesn’t even matter. The bipartisan proposal – yes, an actual bipartisan proposal from a Congress that has been so bitterly divided across party lines to the point of almost complete paralysis – that was defeated today was not about outlawing guns or making gun owners turn in their weapons or register the ones they own that had not previously been registered. It wasn’t about putting limits on the amount or type of guns they own or the amount or type of ammunition those guns fired. It wasn’t about taking away our 2nd Amendment rights. It was about giving the vast majority of the American people – some who are gun owners and many who are not – the peace of mind that, even if only in theory, someone is checking to see if we are willingly and ignorantly putting literal loaded weapons in the hands of violent offenders and/or the mentally ill.

It’s a difficult thing to wrap my head around. With Columbine and Aurora and Virginia Tech and Arizona and Newtown to just name a few – all of these fairly recent examples of gunmen with signs of mental illness, how do you oppose such a thing? You would usually say, ‘What does it take? Does a guy have to walk into a school and shoot a bunch of kindergarteners for us to take action?’ Apparently not even that is enough to defeat the mighty NRA. It is just plain appalling. It’s a scary world we live in when one of their own was shot in the head and even that isn’t enough to make them pass an essentially ceremonial law that may, probably not, but may prevent such an abhorrent act from happening to one of the constituents they purport to represent.

What I can’t figure out though, is what is scarier: the fact that our government has failed us so fundamentally on this issue or the fact that, according to the votes our representatives cast on this issue – as the voice of those whom they represent - the majority of Americans feel the need to stockpile limitless weapons and ammunition independent of any regulation whatsoever. Either way, neither the Republicans or the Democrats won today, but you can be damn sure that America lost.

Copyright © 2013 by Matt Polen