Has there ever been a better frame to put around the politicians who are running scared of the NRA? Frank Rich came right out and called America "Soft on Domestic Terrorism." After being asked if there is any way to end the gun violence, his answer;
Essentially, no. Perhaps the best thing we can do is at least call out the problem for what it is: state-sponsored terrorism. The American people and their elected representatives allow our own homegrown equivalent of suicide bombers — suicide shooters — legal access to weapons with which they can mow down innocents almost anywhere they please. Bloomberg’s money can’t solve this (indeed his political contributions on behalf of gun-law reformers may have backfired) and neither can the blather of a thousand moralizing talking heads. So now, as always happens after these bloodbaths, the real problem is put on hold again and we are back to talking about side issues. Many are calling for keeping a closer watch on government contractors, for instance, but where were they when government contractors at Blackwater, et al, were wreaking havoc on civilians during the Iraq War? That horse is long out of the barn; we have an increasingly privatized government, cheered on by the same anti-government political party that is most in thrall to the NRA.
Read the rest. It's just one more paragraph that sums up the situation we Americans who have an interest in domestic safety must face.
That old hobbyhorse of violent entertainment is also back for another run: Hosts at Fox & Friends at Fox News (Elizabeth Hasselbeck) and Morning Joe at MSNBC (Mika Brzezinski) are united in angrily decrying violent video games. No doubt this makes them feel righteous, but if they really believe this is the crux of the matter, and had guts, they’d start by publicly demanding that their own parent companies dump any and all media products trading in violence. Somehow I don’t think that’s going to happen. Nor are we going to get better mental-health treatment for psychopaths like Aaron Alexis if the opponents of Obamacare (or any national health-care alternative) have anything to say about it. But let’s do talk about it. I remain convinced that the issue of guns in American culture, as hard-wired to our national origins as slavery was, will take every bit as long to rectify as slavery, and can only happen if Americans want it to happen, which most of them don’t now. So let’s at least acknowledge the truth: This country is soft on domestic terrorism.
A grim assessment but I think Frank Rich might just have found the one argument that can move politicians back to reality "So you are saying that you are soft on domestic terrorism?"