Sometimes when we pay attention, we can nearly see the paradigm shifting. Several awful gun carnages – and then the Newtown Massacre, beyond all reason. We could all almost hear and certainly feel the exhale of breath and then the sob from America at this truly senseless act. The tide had clearly turned in favor of stopping this viciousness.
A month later, President Obama and Vice President Biden present sensible and modest proposals to change the most egregious and most obvious gun loopholes – namely, calling for total gun registration and for banning AK-47s and the magazines holding more bullets than you’ll ever need to stop a deer. Heads were nodding all across America, agreeing with these ideas. The low tide of Newtown begins a small turn toward the full.
But our representatives in Congress are afraid to support those initiatives, and talk / prophesy about how the laws won’t pass. Seemingly unaware that they are the ones who won’t pass them.
The National Rifle Association’s LaPierre goes into a famous rant. The gentle, grieving American people see the greed and hate on his face. A hard moment, but it actually supports the shift. Several news media start to keep track of all the guns deaths each day. Some focus on suicides, and then the correlation between owning a gun and a member of the family being killed by or killing with that same gun.
Voices on the right continue to shout incoherently about needing a gun for the coming revolution, about the Second Amendment, about how ‘they’ are coming for the guns. It all helps turn that tide.
I loved the White House photo showing the President shooting skeet – to show that he is a regular guy, and likes guy things like that. What right and white America saw was a black guy with a gun. I wonder if any of them thought – ‘Oh! If we can have guns, they can have guns. If we can stockpile, so can they. That hadn’t occurred to me.’ The racism and fear were transparent.
by this time, Joe Nocera of the New York Times is picking some gun deaths each day to write about on his blog.
Then came the murder of the heroic Navy Seal, with a gun fired by a fellow veteran. Followed by the murders by the LA cop driven over the top by the racial injustice he perceived from his fellow officers.
President Obama put the Medal of Honor around the neck of a hero of the Afghan war, in a beautiful ceremony early this week. The next day, during the State of the Union speech, he mentions that over 1,000 people have been killed by guns in the 2 months since Newtown.
And today, we see a picture of Olympic hero Pistorius being driven to jail for the gun murder of his gorgeous superstar model girlfriend.
As the shift continues, as that tide turns, each new action, on whichever side of the struggle, adds to the positive momentum. The arc of history is indeed bending toward justice. The Universe itself is lending a hand. My intuitive sense is that we will have a successful gun bill in November of this year, 2013.