Three days after President Biden and Vice President Harris were in Atlanta to meet with Asian American community leaders on the killing of eight people, six of them women of Asian descent, they may have to make another trip to Boulder, Colorado.
Sen. Dick Durbin, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, was putting the finishing touches on his hearing on gun violence on Monday night when the 10 people were killed in Boulder.
“We face a pandemic of coronavirus,” he said. “We have another epidemic in America called guns.” He then cited what clearly underscores his concern: 29 mass killings in the U.S. in recent weeks, and over the weekend in Chicago, 20 people were shot, four of them dead.
Meanwhile, too many Republican lawmakers turn a deaf ear and blind eye to the tragedies save for pointing the blame at Black and Brown people.
Earlier this month, the House passed two gun bills. One will expand background checks on gun sales and the other will allow up to 10 days for the background checks.
None of these measures will satisfy gun owners and their lust to have automatic, high-powered weapons and to stand four-square behind their Second Amendment rights.
We are lucky there were not more fatalities back on Jan. 6 when the goons attacked the Capitol, and it’s hard not to see that the current spate of mass killings are related.
There is endemic violence in America’s DNA and it’s inseparable from a need to have a gun to give that anger and hatred bloody, lethal resolution.
Putting a cap on the coronavirus disease continues to be a galling challenge, and long after it’s flattened, gun violence will still be stalking the land.
No certainty has been reached on the motivations of the recent tragedies, but an unchecked disregard for human life, a simmering dislike and hatred cannot be excluded from the violent equation.
Of course, we are just as numbed and flummoxed as others by these terrible outcomes, and we can only hope that the bills and the background checks curb a bit of the gun sales to folks who cannot check their anger and hatred.
But, sadly, even as we hope and pray for a surcease of gun violence, one is already in the works, another finger is on the trigger.