NEWS (Editorial): On Gun Violence and the Illusion of Representative Democracy

I can't believe this was the sentence that happened in my head reading through the news in the morning, it's disheartening, alarming, and enough to make you spit:

"How many school shootings do we have to have before something is seriously done about gun violence in America?"

That was what popped in my head going over a recent summary of shootings: 13 school shootings in the first 6 weeks of the year 2014 alone, that have in total led to 28 deaths since the Newton shooting in December 2012. (via the Guardian US)

I fear hearts have gone cold to the issue; the violence has become a commonplace staple of media in recent times, desensitizing listeners when "another school shooting" comes up.

Am I saying we need to pass legislation immediately, such as Australia did in 1996? No, I'm not even advocating that far (though it'd be nice). I am still stunned to think that this (the least effective of all time) Congress couldn't even pass measures to prevent the purchase of assault grade firearms without background checks for fear of what it would do to the next election cycle.

Politics have become so polarized and invested in private interest that they can no longer do what's right, even when 92% of the country agreed to a need for change because what we see now is that the will of the people has little to no effect on the representative body of government past what is deemed important for elections.

Even with outpouring support for altering gun laws, the watered down bills that came out had been so altered with frivolously added provisions (such as an abusive "anonymous" revision in agriculture paid for by Monsanto) that the final result was no change to help prevent firearms from entering in the wrong hands.

Quite the contrary, gun sales increased from the hype around the legislation.  Now there are more guns out there and we are no closer to managing who might use them. This is a failure of bureaucracy that can only be seen the result of political infighting and mutually beneficial corruption.

I wish there was some better note to end this on, but this has been a failure by no other other words, and it should make people more wary of the role they believe their opinion plays in the game of governance.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/12/school-shootings-newtown-study-gun-violence?CMP=