Three U.S. Senators today penned an op-ed in the USA Today, publicly asking President Donald Trump to reconsider and revisit gun control measures. The op-ed comes on the heels of recent shootings in Oklahoma and California. However, it mentions higher profile shootings of the recent past. Senators Joe Manchin (D-WV), Chris Murphy (D-CT) and Pat Toomey (R-PA) authored the piece.
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Senators Ask Trump for Gun Control
The article first mentions the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting that left 20 children and six school staff dead. The same Sandy Hook shooting remained in the news recently when the Supreme Court decided to allow the families of that shooting to continue their lawsuit against Remington.
Next the piece turned to recent shootings in Santa Clarita, San Diego and ironically, in Duncan, Oklahoma. The senators use Oklahoma as yet another point of evidence in the growth of mass shootings. However, the Oklahoma shooting is a clear case of a domestic dispute tragedy, not a mass shooting. The husband killed the wife and her boyfriend, then turned the gun on himself. There are also conflicting reports that an armed citizen intervened in such a way as to stop the shooting, possibly leading to the gunman shooting himself. There’s certainly no mention of an armed citizen by the “Senators Three.”
A Dubious Coalition
“We represented an unlikely trio of senators to be at the center of these deliberations,” the article says. “There aren’t many controversial issues upon which the three of us — a conservative Republican, a progressive Democrat and a conservative Democrat — could find agreement.”
That’s an incredible, disingenuous statement. It’s crafted merely to sell folks on the idea that this “common sense” gun control they’re asking for in fact makes common sense. But we see it as a unilateral move. Despite whatever snake oil numbers the article cites, we don’t think West Virginia and Pennsylvania’s hunters and shooters support this initiative.
No, this is merely a ploy. Chop away some background check laws over here, while more radical legislators go after magazine capacities and assault rifles over there. We’ve seen this before. And we won’t be fooled.
