Hints of hope amongst the carnage

by Rob Schofield, NC Policy Watch, June 23, 2015.

Average North Carolinians are pushing back against the gun fundamentalists…and winning

It’s hard to feel very optimistic about much of anything in the aftermath of last week’s horrific tragedy/terrorist act in South Carolina. The idea that a hate-filled sociopath could and would enter a sanctuary of peace and then execute nine innocent, welcoming people with whom he had been purporting to engage in Bible study minutes before is so shocking and disturbing that it almost renders rational responses impossible.

In a church service this past Sunday, Rev. William Barber, President of the North Carolina NAACP and Pastor of Greenleaf Christian Church in Goldsboro, quoted a pastoral letter issued by North and South Carolina leaders of his denomination (the Disciples of Christ) that put things this way:

“All murder is tragic. Mass murder bears much more horror when so many victims are senselessly killed so quickly. When mass murder happens in a place of worship and prayer our sense of well-being is threatened. But, our hope for humanity is at stake when murder is motivated by racism!”

Meanwhile, Rev. George Reed of the North Carolina Council of Churches added this in a statement distributed last week:

“This kind of violence against people of faith in other parts of the world has recently and rightfully been called terrorism. Indeed, the people of Emanuel AME have experienced a terrorist act. Fear and violence invaded their space of grace and hospitality while they were together for the faith filled purpose of prayer and worship. As they welcomed the stranger into their midst, an act of faith commanded by the very scriptures they had gathered to study, their gesture of hospitality was met by hatred.”

And yet, unspeakably horrific as the murders were, there are growing signs that maybe, just maybe, the cumulative impact of this nation’s ever-lengthening list of mass murders and racist hate crimes is finally starting to move public opinion and policy in a positive direction.

Yesterday, the Republican Governor of South Carolina reversed her longstanding position to the contrary and called for one of the nation’s most potent emblems of racism – the Confederate flag – to finally be removed from the grounds of the state capitol.

As the Associated Press reported:

“The Republican’s about-face Monday comes after nine black church members were gunned down, allegedly by a young white man who embraced the flag as a symbol of white supremacy.

Haley was surrounded by Republicans and Democrats alike and received a loud applause and cheering when she made her announcement. The flag has flown in front of the state capitol for 15 years after being moved from atop the Statehouse dome.”

Signs of sanity on gun violence too

Meanwhile, here in North Carolina, where another hate-filled fiend executed three innocent Muslim Americans just a few months ago, there are growing signs that the movement to force guns into every nook and cranny of society may, at last, have peaked and started to ebb.

For evidence, consider the actions of the thoroughly conservative and Republican membership of the North Carolina House of Representatives in recent weeks as it radically altered an omnibus bill pushed hard by the state’s pro-gun lobby. The bill, which as introduced, would have dramatically loosened the state’s already weak gun laws, is now just a shadow of its original self.

As Jorge Valencia of WUNC radio explained last week:

“The North Carolina House of Representatives voted Tuesday afternoon to remove the most controversial portions of a bill that would have allowed some people to buy handguns without a permit. It would have also allowed lawmakers to carry pistols on General Assembly grounds.

The bill, tentatively approved in a 77 to 38 bipartisan vote, was one of the most controversial legislative proposals this session….Largely declawed, its most immediate effect will be to order local courts to increase the information they report to a national database to the National Instant Criminal Background Check for firearm sales.”

House members also removed provisions that would have limited the ability of doctors to ask about guns in the home and prohibited them from sharing information about gun possession with law enforcement and would have allowed convicted stalkers to get concealed carry permits after five years.

After all was said and done, it was enough for the courageous and creative underdogs at North Carolinians Against Gun Violence (who had lobbied and organized tirelessly against the bill) to claim one of their first significant victories in years. As the group noted in a statement to its members and supporters:

“77 lawmakers listened to your calls and emails saying that the pistol permitting system saves lives by requiring background checks on guns bought from unlicensed sellers. They stood with the 87% of North Carolinians that want background checks on ALL sales of handguns.

This is a major victory. This vote was being watched throughout the country since we are only one of 18 states that have background checks on handgun sales from private sellers.”

Forcing the bully to back down

Of course, the mere fact that one house of the North Carolina legislature took a few steps to water down a dreadful bill hardly constitutes a radical change in direction. Indeed, given the state Senate’s well-documented penchant for bowing to the demands of far right moneyed interests, there is every reason to expect that some or all of the bill provisions deleted in recent weeks will reemerge later this summer.

That said, there was still something symbolically important in the House’s actions last week. Despite the usual bullying threats from the pro-gun lobby, a large number of extremely conservative politicians who support the right to own guns nonetheless calculated that there was more to gain from standing with public opinion and average North Carolinians when it came to maintaining modest, common sense regulations.

Like a rapidly-growing number of people across the country, the House members acknowledged the simple truth that the big lie of what one might call “gun fundamentalism” – the notion that the Second Amendment must be taken as literal, frozen, inviolable and holy truth – is preposterous.

After all, to accept such an idea is to accept one or both of two absurd premises: a) that all Americans have a right to “bear” whatever “arms” they desire – including tanks, missiles, nuclear weapons and whatever killing machines humans invent in the future or b) that the Constitution and its amendments are somehow fixed permanently in the context of the moment in which they were ratified (a notion that would, for instance, come as a surprise to the electronic speech regulators at the Federal Communications Commission and many other public bodies that rightfully make laws contrary to the literal, 1791 words of the First Amendment).

As constitutional law expert Jeffrey Toobin wrote a few years back:

“[I]t is clear that the scope of the Second Amendment will be determined as much by politics as by the law. The courts will respond to public pressure—as they did by moving to the right on gun control in the last thirty years. And if legislators, responding to their constituents, sense a mandate for new restrictions on guns, the courts will find a way to uphold them. The battle over gun control is not just one of individual votes in Congress, but of a continuing clash of ideas, backed by political power. In other words, the law of the Second Amendment is not settled; no law, not even the Constitution, ever is.”

Now that the lawmakers have stood up once so effectively to the pro-gun bullies, let’s hope fervently that the wisdom of maintaining a reasonable set of gun regulations – regulations that have prevented and will continue to prevent several future Dylann Roofs from gaining access to easy guns – continues to prevail on Jones Street.

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