Enough Of Enough

Apparently, enough was not enough when on June 2

Declaring "Enough, enough!" U.S. President Joe Biden on Thursday called on Congress to ban assault weapons, expand background checks and implement other gun control measures to address a string of mass shootings that have struck the United States.

Speaking from the White House, in a speech broadcast live in primetime, Biden asked a country stunned by the recent shootings at a school in Texas, a grocery store in New York and a medical building in Oklahoma, how many more lives it would take to change gun laws in America.

"For God's sake, how much more carnage are we willing to accept?" Biden asked.

Quite a bit. After the massacre of six people (plus many more injured) in Highland Park, Illinois at an Independence Day parade, President Biden has declared "Jill and I are shocked by the senseless gun violence that has yet again brought grief to an American community on this Independence Day."

Of course, the President was shocked. He already had declared "enough, enough!" And to be fair, after negotiations between Democratic senators and Republican senators, an agreement recently was reached on a (tepid) gun safety proposal, thereafter approved by the Senate and House and signed by the President. About that, the former Chief of Staff for Harry Reid, Adam Jentleson, had it right:

I think it’s important to be honest that on the scale of national policy, the bill is an admission of defeat, a marker of decline, a sign that our system is no longer capable of passing policy solutions that are on the same scale as the challenges they seek to address.

— Adam Jentleson 🎈 (@AJentleson) July 5, 2022

Jentleson tweeted promptly after the carnage in Highland Park, but his observation was (or should have been) obvious once Senators Murphy and Cornyn had struck a deal. However, as best as can be determined, it had not spurred anyone else generally on the left to be as realistically cynical about the resultant legislation. And still, expectations are being lifted to an unrealistic level. Promoting the need for an assault weapons ban with Biden-like rhetoric:

More kids’ bicycles strewn in a sidewalk, grandparents lost, blood in the streets.

Enough. I have long advocated for the assault weapons ban. These weapons belong in the hands of trained military, not madmen.

— Amy Klobuchar (@amyklobuchar) July 5, 2022

Wrong, Senator. Sufficiency already had been established, however mass shootings are calculated. . We reached the enough stage a long time ago. And because of firearms manufacturers, the firearms lobby, and Republican officials, "we" are willing to accept a lot more of the unfortunate exercise in Second Amendment freedoms 

Senator Klobuchar and President Biden can ineffectually mimic the commercial marketing of the "enough" campaign, which will only raise expectations of ending gun violence swiftly. The slaughter, in instances of mass shooting or more common street violence, will continue. It will not end soon, and that's not for God's sake.

 

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