Gun-Loving Congress Flinches

When the shooting started in Washington today, there was no hesitation in the Capitol two miles away: Both houses shut down with no debate about Second Amendment rights. In the face of possibly imminent danger to themselves, gung-ho NRA-loving lawmakers did the equivalent of hiding under their desks.

Now we face the usual ritual that follows random gun massacres: counting the dead and wounded, listening to the pointless bleating of “security” analysts, searching for “motives” to explain madness that is by definition unfathomable, wallowing in grief for victims and families and, after a few days, retreating into that cosmic shrug that always follows.

If today’s shooter had somehow breached not a Navy facility but the Capitol itself, randomly butchering everyone in sight, would it have made any difference?  

The President, in the White House only four miles from the shootings, cancels a speech and shakes his head over “men and women who were going to work, doing their job protecting all of us” who “know the dangers of serving abroad, but today they faced the unimaginable violence that they wouldn’t have expected here at home.”

As we move through the desolation we now know so well, won’t those with political power in Washington pause long enough to consider what all of us, they themselves included, at every moment face from a madman’s finger on the trigger of a semi-automatic weapon?

Is this the world they want to bequeath their children and grandchildren?  They should come out from under their desks and tell us.