By Roy S. Johnson, 2021 Pulitzer Prize finalist for commentary and winner of 2021 Edward R. Morrow prize for podcasts: “Unjustifiable”, co-hosted with John Archibald.
This is an opinion column.
Don’t tell me. I’m tired of hearing it. Tired of the hypocrisy. Tired of the lies.
Don’t tell me, show me. Show me you care.
Show me you care about life more than guns.
Show me you are truly pro lives and not just pro-guns.
Show me, Republicans.
On Tuesday, an 18-year-old man walked into a classroom at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, 80 miles west of San Antonio, and murdered 19 fourth graders and two teachers with an A-15 rifle he purchased the week before. For his birthday. Not long before wreaking that carnage, the man shot his grandmother. In the face. And bragged about it on social media, then adding: “I’m going to shoot an elementary school.”
Show me you care. That you care about their lives at least a scintilla more than you care about preserving the perceived freedom to buy weapons of mass evil without expanded background checks.
Without red-flag laws. Without any tangible, meaningful effort to stymie the movement of guns into the hands of people hell-bent on breaking the law. Hell-bent on killing.
Show me you care about parents’ freedom to send their sons and daughters to school each morning without fear they will be murdered before coming home.
Stop talking. Stop with the empty platitudes. Never say “thoughts and prayers” again.
Show me, instead. Show me you care about the freedom of a child to sit in a classroom and never, ever again feel the unfathomable terror that must have pierced those young angels’ hearts before bullets ended their lives.
The same terror felt by the children of Sandy Hook. Of Parkland. Of Columbine.
By children killed in the 27 school shootings that have occurred in the United States this year.
Show me you care about their lives more than where they pee.
Don’t tell me anymore. I’m tired of hearing it. Stop talking.
Show me, dammit. (As some of my elders used to say: Y’all done made me cuss.)
We’re still reeling from Buffalo. From when a man, another 18-year-old white man drove 200 miles from his hometown, murdered 10 people, wounding three more at a grocery store in a mostly Black area of the city in western New York. All of the dead were Black. Black wives. Black fathers. Black retired law enforcement officers. Black grandmothers. Black deacons. Black sisters. Black folks trying to buy food.
Still reeling from Laguna Woods. From a man walking into the Taiwanese Presbyterian Church, just a day after Buffalo, and opening fire during a luncheon being held after service, filling one man and wounding five others.
Too many are still reeling, still grieving, from mass shootings in just the last few years too numerous to count. From Las Vegas (60 dead). From Orlando (49 dead). From Virginia Tech (32 dead). From Southerland Springs (26). From El Paso (23).
From killings, too, in our large cities. In Alabama. In Birmingham, where guns roll up and down Interstate 20 faster than 18 wheelers. In Birmingham, where nine Birmingham City Schools students—along with four other teens—have been killed by gunfire this year.
All lives matter, you like to say. Please. Stop talking.
Show me you care about all these lives lost more than your blood-money buddies at the National Rifle Association.
Don’t tell me. Show me. Show us all.
All of us, the majority of Americans whom poll after poll show have long supported at least some reform, particularly expanded background checks.
All of us with children, nieces, nephews, with little cousins. Show all of us.
“I’ve got granddaughters the age of these kids and I am just numb,” former Alabama U.S. Senator Doug Jones told me Wednesday. “My wife went to bed with tears in her eyes. She woke up with tears in her eyes. It’s just stunning that in this nation we’ve come to this.”
We’re here for one simple reason: Because Republicans at the federal and state levels would rather hold their breath and turn blue—I mean red—in the face than do anything to stymie to flow of guns into unsound hands. Into unstable hands. Into angry hands.
Nationally, two reform bills have languished on minority leader Sen. Mitch McConnell’s desk longer than outdated milk. The Bipartisan Background Checks Act would create a national standard for background checks for commercial gun sales; the Enhanced Background Checks Act extends the federal background check period to 10 days from three. (White supremacist, neo-Nazi, murderer Dylann Roof was able to buy the guns he used to murder nine Black people in 2015 while they were worshiping at Emanuel A.M.E Church in Charleston, South Carolina because his background check was not completed in three days.)
Both bills passed the House of Representatives but when Republicans held the Senate, McConnell curmudgeonly refused to allow them to come to a vote. Now, 60 votes are required to move forward with legislation, meaning 10 Republicans in the 50-50 Senate would have to vote affirmative for the bills to come to the floor.
While a slight flurry of activity in the Senate, in the hours after Uvalde, is stirring possible bipartisan reform once again Jones has seen it before. Like when even President Trump, in the hours after Parkland, hinted he’d support at least a tinge of reform on background checks, only to flip-flop like a redfish out of water when hooked by the NRA. (And as of this writing, Trump, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and state Rep. Tony Gonzales – Uvalde is in his district – are slated to speak and an NRA fest in Houston this weekend.)
Now, we’ve come to this.
“It has now gotten to a point when something happens, people go into partisan corners and they don’t come out,” Jones said. “People on the right immediately dismiss any [tragedy] as a mental health issue. People on the left immediately go to gun restrictions. In truth, it is both and it needs to be tackled as both. If you can do that you ought to be able to come together on some common-sense solutions to make a difference.”
Nineteen states, along with the District of Columbia, have some form of red-flag laws, which allow the seizure of guns from someone deemed a threat to himself or others, with due process and before a neutral judge.
Alabama is not one of those states. During the 2019 legislative session, state Rep. Merika Coleman (D-Birmingham) sponsored the Gun Violence Protective Order Act, crafted from similar legislation nationwide. It went nowhere.
And, of course, there isn’t even a whisper of gun sanity in those who ratchet Republican campaigns for governor and the U.S. Senate.
“Have you seen any of our candidates offer [ideas]?” Jones asked, rhetorically, I presume. “No. What you see them pulling little .38 pistols out of their purse or walking through a field with a damn AR-15.”
That’s what you show, Republicans, and it tells us a lot.
It tells us you don’t really care. Not about lives. Not even as much as guns.
Prove me wrong. Show me I’m wrong, dammit.
