Resurrecting immigration reform and recalling the DREAMers

Posted on January 29, 2013 by David S. Meyer

Only a small part of any comprehensive immigration reform proposal that the Senate considers will address the Dreamers, young people brought without papers to the United States as children, but the revival of immigration reform is directly attributable to their efforts.

The influence of social movements plays out over long periods of time, in often indirect ways, and the brave coming out campaigns led by young immigrants shook up mainstream politics in ways that are far too easy to neglect.

In the first years of the Obama administration, with comprehensive reforms invisible on the mainstream political agenda, young activists pulled out the piece of reform most relevant to their lives: a path toward recognition and citizenship for those who immigrated as children and found their lives stalled when they finished school.  They couldn’t work legally, or even drive, and they lived in constant peril of discovery and deportation.  The DREAMers represented America’s best and brightest, mostly students who want to dig into America.  In risky campaigns, they disclosed their unstable status while risking arrest, protesting on the streets or even occupying the offices of hostile legislators.

Some Democratic members of Congress took up their cause, pressing not comprehensive reform, but just a place for young people who had been immigrated by their parents, and only those willing and able to go to college or serve in the military.  The DREAM Act enjoyed majority support in the lame duck Congress at the tail end of 2010, but a filibuster in the Senate stalled the effort, devastating the DREAMers who now faced a Republican House of Representatives.

But the DREAM didn’t die.  The politics of immigration took a backseat to the economy in the lead-up to the 2012 elections, but not too far back.  Republican hopefuls, trying to ingratiate themselves with primary voters, offered tough, then tougher, stances on undocumented immigrants, including the DREAMers.  Mitt Romney, the eventual nominee, promised a set of policies that would encourage self-deportation.

And Latinos turned out at the polls in unprecedented numbers, voting against the Republican ticket overwhelmingly.  Latinos voted for Democrats in about the same percentages as American Jews, but there are many more of them, often in swing states.

The DREAMers deserve the credit for this voter turnout, partly by provoking anti-immigrant mobilization that seemed to capture the Republican Party.  The DREAMers deserve the credit for the media focus on the Latino vote, for the high visibility and high salience of the immigration issue, and they deserve the credit for the astonishingly recent Republican recognition that they need to do better with Latino voters to win national elections.  Because of the DREAMers, immigration reform has become the reed upon which thoughtful (and less thoughtful) Republicans have hung their hopes for electoral ressurection.

“The politics on this issue have been turned upside down,” said Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer (New York), “For the first time ever, there is more political risk in opposing immigration reform, than in supporting it.“

The DREAMers turned those politics upside down.

Now mainstream politicians are trying to right those politics.  Despite Sen. Schumer’s analysis, Republicans face plenty of risks in advocating reform.  From the precinct level on up, many Republicans got elected with promises of preventing any kind of amnesty for immigrants.  The prospects of anti-immigrant challenges from the right are serious.  What’s more, any kind of path toward citizenship means a procession of new voters who will start without much sympathy for the Republican Party.

The pragmatic strategy for Republicans is to find a way to do enough on immigration quickly enough that the issue is no longer important or visible two years hence.  Providing more visas for high tech workers is a relatively easy and attractive aspect of immigration reform.  So is the DREAM Act.  A new legalized status for immigrants that can’t lead to citizenship or a suspension of all moves toward citizenship until the borders are certified as “controlled” are sparkly alternatives for Republicans trying to thread a slender needle.

The challenge for DREAMers is to make sure the boundaries of reform aren’t so limited.  Their efforts made this moment possible, but absent their continued pressure, the outcomes are likely to be extremely disappointing.

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Martin Luther King Day (2013): The advantages of dead heroes

Posted on January 21, 2013 by David S. Meyer

(Today’s presidential inauguration lands on the Martin Luther King Day holiday.  This is a repost on the no-longer contested King holiday.)

Martin Luther King died young enough and dramatically enough to be turned into an American hero, but it was neither his youth nor his death that made him heroic.

In his rather brief public life, beginning in Montgomery at 26, and ending with his assassination at 39, King consistently displayed rhetorical brilliance (on the podium and the page), strategic acumen, and moral and physical courage.

The effort to honor Martin Luther King with a holiday commemorating his birthday started at the King Center, in Atlanta, in the year after his assassination.  States began to follow suit, and by 1983, more than half celebrated King’s life with a day.  In that year, Ronald Reagan signed a bill making Martin Luther King day a national holiday expressing ambivalence, acknowledging that it was costly, and that King may have been a Communist.

The King holiday was about Martin Luther King, to be sure, but it was meant to represent far more than the man.  King stands in for the civil rights movement and for African-American history more generally.  I often wonder if the eloquence of the 1963 “I have a dream” speech winds up obscuring not only a man with broader goals, but a much more contested–and ambitious–movement.

The man and the movement are ossified into an iconic image, like a statue, which locks King and the movement into the politics of 1963-1965.  We accept King’s dream, that little children will play together, and that people will be judged by “the content of their character” (a favorite phrase on the right).

The image, like a statue, is available for appropriation to advocates of all political stripes, and the establishment of the holiday itself represents an achievement of the civil rights movement, winning the holiday if not broader economic and social equality.

Before the transformation of the man into an icon, King transformed himself from a

Man into icon

pastor into an activist, a peripatetic crusader for justice.

But the pastor didn’t disappear; rather this role grew into something larger, as King himself transformed himself from a minister into a an Old Testament prophet, one whose primary concern was always the people on the margins, the widows and orphans, the poor and hungry.  In standing with those on the margins, King courageously used–and risked–the advantages of his privilege, pedigree, and education.  He also knew that he risked his safety and his life.

In his writing, King used his education and his vocation to support his political goals.  In the critically important “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” he cited both the Constitution and the Bible in support of Federal intervention in local politics to support desegregation and human rights.  (We know that other activists now use the same sources to justify pushing the Federal government out of local politics.)

King explained that he was in jail in Birmingham, Alabama, because he had nonviolently defied local authorities in the service of higher laws, the Constitution and the Gospel.  This was not like making a provocative statement on one’s own [profitable] radio or television show.  There were real costs and severe risks.

King was never less than controversial during his life, under FBI surveillance during his political career, and vigorously criticized by opponents (for demanding too much and too strongly) and allies (for not demanding more, more vigorously).

When he was assassinated outside a Memphis motel in 1968, he was standing with sanitation workers on strike, straying from a simpler civil rights agenda.  He had also alienated some civil rights supporters by coming out, strongly, against the war in Vietnam.  And Black Power activists saw their own efforts as overtaking King’s politics and rhetoric.  By the time he was killed, Martin Luther King’s popular support had been waning for some time.

Posterity has rescued an image of Martin Luther King, at the expense of the man’s own broader political vision.

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Guns across America

Posted on January 20, 2013 by David S. Meyer

Opponents of any new restrictions on guns turned up at every state capital on Saturday, some carrying weapons where they were allowed to do so.  The demonstrators were peaceful and law-abiding, by all accounts, but some suggested they might not stay that way.

Organized largely on-line, through mailing lists and Facebook pages, the mobilization wasn’t massive–but it didn’t have to be.  Gun rights enthusiasts wanted to show that resistance to new laws wasn’t limited to the National Rifle Association’s lobbyists, but could also be seen at the grassroots.

The largest turnout I could find was reported as 2,000 people, in Albany, New York, where the state legislature had just passed the strictest gun laws in the United States.  In Pierre, South Dakota, where new restrictions aren’t remotely visible on the horizon, the turnout appeared to be in the dozens.

This all makes sense, and not just because so many more people live in New York than South Dakota.  People respond to threats.  The resurrected push for modest gun control steps follows in the wake of the tragic school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.  The current tangle of restrictions and loopholes seems far less satisfactory to many people than it did a month ago.  And longtime supporters of gun control recognize that they now have a new chance to make the case they’ve been trying to make for years.

The appreciators participating in Gun Appreciation Day also feel threatened, just after President Obama announced nearly two dozen executive actions and made specific proposals for Congressional attention, and just before he takes the oath of office for another four year term–and just before the celebration of Martin Luther King Day.  In speeches, interviews and on placards, they argue that these new restrictions would not have prevented the shootings in Newtown, won’t make anyone safer, and violate the second amendment.  (For a sample of comments, see the Washington Times report.)

Some warn that any new restrictions will prevent American citizens from effectively defending themselves from an increasingly tyrannical government.  This is a tough argument to make, largely because even the semi-automatic rifles targeted by a ban on assault weapons are no match for the forces national, state, and even local governments can muster.  (Private citizens can’t legally buy automatic weapons.  In the most fundamentalist gun rights opinion the Supreme Court has ever delivered, District of Columbia v. Heller [2008], Justice Scalia emphasized that the second amendment right was NOT unlimited.)  The Confederacy had ready access to arms, as did Randy Weaver at Ruby Ridge, as did the Black Panthers, and MOVE in Philadelphia.  For good or ill, we live in an era of states.

The more effective defense against federal gun control initiatives is a Constitutional system that favors the opponents of change, and the virtually unwavering fealty that the NRA and other gun rights groups demand from the people they help elect.

So why demonstrate at all?  The demonstrations remind gun rights supporters of a battle they may be engaged in, underscoring and overstating the proximate threat of a president moved by the massacre of school children to try to do something.  It also connects them with like-minded people and reminds them all of the organizations that work on their behalf in Washington, DC.

The NRA won’t be depending upon local demonstrations to stop President Obama’s initiatives, but such protests are another tool that few groups can afford to write off.  And, in the meantime, gun rights advocates have gotten their story in the newspapers across the country on yet another day.

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Gun Appreciation Day and Martin Luther King’s birthday

Posted on January 15, 2013 by David S. Meyer

When an interviewer asked Larry Ward, a conservative media strategist, about the appropriateness of scheduling “Gun Appreciation Day” on January 19th, the holiday commemorating Martin Luther King, Ward was quick on his feet, if not particularly sure-footed.  Martin Luther King would surely appreciate Gun Appreciation Day, Ward responded, because he recognized the importance of democracy and self-defense.  Indeed, had African-Americans enjoyed access to firearms on the eve of the American revolution, perhaps we could have avoided the scourge of slavery.

You can see it below:

This is so obviously stupid on so many levels that it’s tempting to get sucked up into debating the point.  You don’t need to know much about the global slave trade in precolonial America to realize that when everyone has firearms, the just don’t always prevail.  Actual history might complicate the point even further.  And as to Reverend King’s blessing: by the end of his life, King was a committed pacifist (and pacifist doesn’t offer an exemption for deadly weapons for your side).

Adam Winkler reports that King kept a weapon in his home during the early days of his civil rights struggle, and even applied for a concealed carry permit, citing ongoing threats to himself and his family.  As the campaigns went on, however, he came to doubt the viability and morality of armed self-defense.  Like so many civil rights activists, he subjected himself to severe beatings without fighting back, leaning on what he hoped was a universal sense of justice. His experience changed his mind.  Neither Larry Ward nor I know whether the experience of being shot and killed by an escaped convict who bought a rifle in store might have changed his mind as well.  Obviously Ward, a disciple of Dick Morris and master of marketing, is better suited to speculate on such a thing than I am.

Martin Luther King isn’t around to correct him, and it’s doubtful that Larry Ward has felt compelled to sharpen his own thinking by reading anything that King wrote or said.

Meanwhile, in Northern California, Marin County District Attorney Ed Barberian is launching a gun buy-back program to commemorate King and the holiday.

Virtually everyone wants to claim the blessings of iconic heroes, including Martin Luther King, the Founding Fathers, or Jesus Christ.  We should be skeptical.  I always think that knowing more about the icon and his or her times will help us evaluate such claims, but of course, I would say that.

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Threat, polarization, and mobilization in the gun debate

Posted on January 11, 2013 by David S. Meyer

Until just a few weeks ago, the notion of a policy-relevant debate about access to guns seemed fanciful.  Supporters of relatively easy access to firearms of all sorts were resolute, and advocates of limits of any kind were either silent or marginal.

A crazed gunman’s massacre of children in a public school in Newtown, Connecticut, reshuffled this alignment–at least a little.  The event, and public concern about school shootings, gave potential control advocates, including the President of the United States, the incentive to work on the issue.  Their words, activism at the grassroots, and the prospects of policy change, have threatened gun rights activists enough to mobilize them as well.  Some ran to buy guns that might soon be harder to get; others are getting political.

The picture above is from a protest outside a gun show in Stamford, Connecticut, about 40 miles from Newtown.  It’s too soon, protesters said.  After all, gun shows represent one of the largest loopholes in contemporary gun laws; buyers can avoid the background checks that they would have to get in order to buy a gun from a store.  Some of the drivers-by honked in support; others ridiculed the demonstrators.  The company running the show canceled an event scheduled in Waterbury (twenty miles from Newtown) for the following weekend.  The demonstrators, organized by A Million Moms for Gun Control, Occupy the NRA, and others, was a way to draw attention to an event that otherwise passes unnoticed, and to politicize this particular kind of commerce.

Activists protesting a gun show in Utah the same weekend received a more forceful response.  Demonstrators who said they were seeking a conversation with their gun-buying neighbors mostly just got boos.

Polarizing the issue turns out to be good for activist groups.  The National Rifle Association reports 100,000 new members.  That means money, attention, and even more leverage.  Mayors against Illegal Guns, organized by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, claimed 400,000 new members.  That’s also money, attention, and maybe even leverage.

Former Representative Gabrielle Giffords, shot by a(nother) crazed gunman at a shopping center, and her husband, retired astronaut Mark Kelley, announced a fund-raising campaign to counterbalance the NRA, Americans for Responsible Solutions.  Because Rep. Giffords was a gun owner and a gun rights advocate, and because she will bear the consequences of our current policies for the rest of her life, we’d think her participation will have special importance, and that she’d be particularly difficult to discredit or ignore.

Maybe.

But that’s what gun control advocates thought more than thirty years ago, when James Brady and his wife Sarah Brady began engaging in a campaign for gun control.  Brady, who

Jim Brady and Ronald Reagan

worked as Ronald Reagan’s press secretary, was shot and severely wounded by (yet) a(nother) crazed gunman who also shot the president in 1981.  Alas, there’s not much evidence that his political background or his life experience helped his argument with gun rights fundamentalists.

Mobilization on more than one side of an issue usually solidifies everyone’s positions and commitments.  It doesn’t usually bode well for policy reforms.  Particularly in the current political climate, when the House of Representatives is controlled by Republicans who mostly fear primary challengers more than Democratic opponents in a general election, passing new laws will be extremely difficult.  The American system, of course, is designed to make it hard to change anything.

It’s possible, of course, that reformers will seek to push the issue and punish their opponents at the polls–just as the NRA has effectively punished its opponents for years.  But they won’t be alone in doing so.  Will newly elected Democrats in the Senate, like Heidi Heitkamp (North Dakota) or Joe Manchin (West Virginia) be willing to define their own positions on what constitutes reasonable access to firearms, knowing that the NRA and its allies will construe any effort at regulation (universal background checks?  limits on magazine size?) as a severe moral and political defection?

Opponents of legal reforms need to stall.  Proponents of gun control will have to maintain their attention and mobilization over a long period of time.  It’s hard.

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Occupy in Steubenville, Ohio

Posted on January 5, 2013 by David S. Meyer

Activists in Ohio–and elsewhere–have grabbed the Occupy label to demonstrate their

Masks sell for $5

concern that Steubenville authorities (including the police and the high school football coaching staff) are covering up a sexual assault.  Using Occupy, Anonymous, the Guy Fawkes mask, hacktivist tools, and visible mobilization, they’ve been successful in bringing attention to what they describe as a violent crime that took place five months ago.

Two football players were arrested, charged, and released, and await trial for rape next month, but a local debate about what this incident is really all about has intensified.  While some locals question whether a sexual assault actually took place, locals and a broader public have questioned why only two young men are facing charges when many others witnessed–and may have participated–in assaulting the girl.  (See good summaries of the assault and the aftermath at the New York Times, The Atlantic,and CNN.)

Last weekend, an estimated 2,000 people protested against the sheriff’s handling of the crime, particularly about the failure to charge others involved.  The legal process has been a mess, including the almost immediate announcement by the Jefferson County prosecutor that she was recusing herself from the case because her son was a member of the football team.  State prosecutors are responsible,  Meanwhile,  hactivists, only some Anonymous, had released photos of the sixteen year old victim dragged from party to party, and a video of one observer ridiculing the girl. They’ve also begun to identify other individuals they believe should be charged, and accused both the football team and the sheriff of ignoring evidence.

At this point, the activism has been successful in bringing attention to both the case and (perhaps) larger problems of sexual assault and rape culture.  In this way, it’s an example reminiscent of the activism around the shooting of Trayvon Martin. There is however, as Slate’s Amanda Marcotte notes, a fine line between activism and vigilantism.

For Occupy, there’s something else worth thinking about: Occupy emerged as a targeted

Occupy Steubenville rally

action against big capital with a broad concern about political and economic inequality.  The issues of concern to local activists in Steubenville may be related, but the connections aren’t immediately obvious, nor were they suggested in most of the 2011 protests in public spaces around the United States.

Occupy has become a label that activists of any sort can try to grab in making their own claims.  If it inspires people at the grassroots to mobilize on behalf of the things they care about, this inspiration comes with a cost of clarity and coherence about just what Occupy is all about.

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Meme war: Kalle Lasn keeps pitching

Posted on December 25, 2012 by David S. Meyer

More than a year past the start of Occupy, Kalle Lasn of Adbusters has been pushing an anti-consumerist campaign, Buy Nothing Day.  Because of Lasn’s charm and media savvy, and because of Occupy, the campaign got some mainstream attention, but judging from the crowded parking lots at the malls out here, it’s generated less inactivity than Lasn hoped.  And, of course, Lasn is hardly alone in ranting against the commercialism of Christmas.

This time, however, his campaign has given journalists cause to publish profiles (New York Times; The Walrus) of the man who called for, and named, Occupy, and who set the date–in commemoration of his mother’s birthday.

A one-time market researcher, Lasn redirected his life in the wake of the movements of 1968.  For more than twenty years, he’s been publishing Abusters, an anti-consumerist magazine filled with biting satire and ideas for campaigns.  Not an organizer, Lasn describes himself as a meme warrior, responsible for launching “mind bombs” and waiting for responses.  Not much happened in response to Buy Nothing Day, but not long ago another effort took off and spun out of control.

Lasn designed the beautiful poster in the call to Occupy Wall Street, a campaign that spread from Zuccotti Park across the United States and beyond.  The activists who embraced the name and the tactic never agreed on the one demand (not even Lasn’s idea of a transaction tax)–save to continue to Occupy–but Occupy shook mainstream politics.  Lasn’s job is to keep throwing out ideas.  He’s been doing it long enough to know that it’s virtually impossible to predict which ideas will spread when, nor to control what activists do with them.  The best he can do, the best we can do, is to keep trying.

So, in addition to Buy Nothing Day, and the ongoing efforts of Adbusters, Lasn has just published Meme Wars: The Creative Destruction of Neoclassical Economics that lays a set of ideas under the mind bombs.

(Is it ironic that I provide an Amazon link?  I should have posted while you were still Christmas shopping.)

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NRA digs the bunker deeper

Posted on December 21, 2012 by David S. Meyer

In a surprise holiday gift to advocates of gun control, National Rifle Association Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre called for armed guards in the nation’s schools.  It was a bizarre speech (read it here) and an odd departure from the NRA’s usual policy of hunkering down in silence after a tragic shooting, ostensibly out of respect to the victims.  Practically, when your ideas are unlikely to be well-received, it makes sense to wait for the moment to pass.  LaPierre ignored the pointed interruptions from Code Pink activists, and from the press as well.  This time, he just talked.

Gun control advocates have been putting pressure on the NRA and calls for government action were intensifying.  Meanwhile, notable NRA members, including Senators Joe Manchin (West Virginia) and Mark Warner (Virginia) called for the NRA to be part of discussions to forge a solution, signalling a willingness to make concessions on the size of ammunition magazines or background checks.

LaPierre would have no part of such negotiations, intensifying his group’s unabashed commitment to defending Americans’ ready access to guns.  The speech was defensive, criticizing the media and politicians for blaming guns, and the culture, for promoting violence in movies and video games.  He then called for government to spend whatever it takes to protect students as it does the president.

Although there may be some discussion on the utility and feasibility of the more guards proposal–perhaps even a recognition of the irony of calling for an increase in the presence of armed government employees (those NRA advocates say private weapons are supposed to protect against)–this proposal is bound to be a non-starter.  More than anything, it reflects the distance of the NRA from both the mainstream political debate and even the hunters and target shooters in its base.  Quite clearly, LaPierre is not talking with people who disagree with him–or at least not listening.

Early responses were, predictably, negative.  Politico quotes Michael Steele, former Republican Party chair, “I don’t even know where to begin. As a supporter of the Second Amendment…I just found it very haunting and very disturbing that our country now is talking about arming our teachers and our principals in classrooms.”

Like many others, Steele can imagine a set of regulations that would continue to allow ready access for most people to most weapons, and imagine the support of gun owners who don’t see the need for large magazines or semi-automatic weapons.

But LaPierre has drawn a line in the sand for NRA members, including elected officials, and it’s hard to imagine that all of them are going to continue to allow the organization to set the terms of the debate.  I suspect that the first calls out of the offices of Senators Manchin and Warner were to NRA insiders, asking for a little more cover.  Surely, some will refuse to cross the line and stand with LaPierre and the organization.

This doesn’t mean, of course, that meaningful gun control will be easy to get through this Congress, or that most of the gun rights stalwarts in office will change their minds.  It does mean that the mainstream of the debate will not include the largest and most powerful gun rights organization.

The sharp story here is that LaPierre has refused to bend on what he sees as his group’s core mission; this makes sense only if you believe that your core audience already agrees with you, if purity trumps pragmatism and influence.

As if to demonstrate the tendency of stalwarts to worry only about their core supporters is the attack by PETA’s Ingrid Newkirk on the morality of the NRA for supporting hunting!  (Again, this isn’t what most Americans want to hear about, nor is it likely to be a significant issue in the mainstream debate.)

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Creating a debate on gun laws

Posted on December 18, 2012 by David S. Meyer

Gun control advocates are trying to invigorate the long-ossified debate on national gun laws in the United States.  This means filling the moment of public attention caused by the mass shooting at an elementary school in Connecticut.

Public demonstrations are one way to claim the space, define the problem, and press for political action.  This started right away, with the vigil on Friday afternoon (pictured above), right outside the White House.  The numbers were small, but the background dramatic and the message clear.  Activists are asking the president to put together a plan before the State of the Union address next month.

The vigil outside the White House has been imitated in cities and towns across the United States (e.g., here and here).  Partly, it’s that people want to do something in response to the pain in Newtown, Connecticut.  But there’s also a cumulative sense of power and possibility that comes with people taking action.  New action on gun control seems more likely to matter now than just a few weeks ago.

In Washington, DC, activists have moved from the White House to directly targeting the National Rifle Association (NRA), explicitly blaming the organization for stopping even the smallest reforms.

Focusing on the organized interests preventing gun control is a way to build solidarity among advocates.  It’s also an effort to drive a wedge between at least some elected officials and the organization.  The visible defections from absolutist opposition to any new laws (see Senator Joe Manchin, for example) is a start.

Could we actually see  an informed debate on the issues?  Are there viable alternatives?  I’ve said that data could help, and here’s a good start on data.  GunPolicy.org collects data on gun laws, ownership, and crime around the globe.  It’s a good place to start when thinking about whether things have to be the way they are.

Rate of Unintentional Gun Death per 100,000 People Source: http://www.gunpolicy.org/

But one more thing: attention is limited.  Always.  Putting gun control on the agenda will crowd everything else, pushing something to the back burner.  When Barack Obama was elected president, he promised to press for huge reforms in health care, action on climate change, and immigration reform–among other things.  By the time his health care reform was passed, he had pretty much lost the coalition needed to do much else.

This time, running for reelection, Barack Obama again promised action on the environment and on immigration reform.  Newtown has put gun control on the agenda as well.  Activists won’t worry about what it will crowd off the agenda, but bet that the White House will.

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Making sense of tragic events

Posted on December 17, 2012 by David S. Meyer

The first few shots fired by a young man to kill his mother–who owned the gun–would not have broken through the orchestrated silence on gun control.  The movie theater massacre in Aurora, Colorado didn’t, nor did a pointed question at the presidential debates.  The horrific school shooting in Newtown, and the deaths of twenty first graders might.

It depends on how well prepared advocates for gun control are, and how much work they’ve done over the past four years to build support for reform.

Here, I fear I’ll end up reiterating the basic points I made after a lone gunman attacked Representative Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson, killing six people, severely wounding others.  That was not quite two years ago, and other mass shootings have taken place since.

But here’s the story:

Attention is limited.  Always.

Although widespread gun ownership in America is constant, as is the eruptions of murders and mass killings with guns, mainstream politicians have mostly stayed away from engaging a political fight that usually looks unwinnable.  When sudden events put the consequences of our policies in high relief, that political fight can look more urgent or more promising.

We want to believe that we can control our lives–or at least protect our children.  We want to believe that tragedies are avoidable.  Crisis lets us haul out our favorite understanding of the world to offer remedies.  Activists and advocates try to fill the discussion with their own answers.

Mass shootings are rare events in the United States–and much rarer elsewhere, resulting from idiosyncratic mixes of weapons, young white men, and mental illness.  Advocates can run all sorts of explanations and remedies through the moment.

The easy availability of highly lethal weapons is an obvious culprit.  Gun control advocates have been waging an uphill struggle over the past decade plus, and Newtown allows them to revisit the arguments they’ve been making forever, perhaps with a newly responsive audience.  Representative Carolyn McCarthy (Democrat, New York) entered politics after her husband and son were shot in a mass killing on the Long Island Railroad nearly 20 years ago.  She’s been making the case for stricter controls since, and has promised to embarrass President Obama if he doesn’t exercise leadership on the issue.

This last shooting seems to have broken the ranks of those opposed to any efforts at regulating weapon ownership.  Mark DeMoss, formerly an adviser to Governor Mitt Romney, has urged Republicans to defect from the absolutists in their party, and work for sensible regulations.  Senator Joe Manchin (Democrat, West Virginia), who has enjoyed stellar rankings from the National Rifle Association (NRA), has called for the organization to negotiate reasonable restrictions that might prevent future tragedies.  Senator Manchin had run campaign ads featuring himself shooting.  There will be others.

The NRA itself has tried to stay out of the moment, implementing a silence on its website and social media platforms.

But the NRA isn’t the only organized group at work here.

Gun Owners of America, a group that originated out of frustration with the NRA’s willingness to compromise on fundamental issues, quickly issued a statement declaring that gun control advocates had “blood on their hands” for preventing access to arms that would have stopped the Newtown killer.  They continued, “we must also insist that these criminal friendly elected officials not even try to blame gun owners and our ‘gun culture’ for what a criminal did.  Had a few of us been available with guns at the Newton school, most of the victims might still be alive.”

Congressman Louie Gohmert (Republican, Texas) was troubled by the absence of weaponry, particularly in the principal’s office.  In a televised interview, he lamented,  “I wish to God she had had an M4 in her office locked up so when she heard gunfire she pulls it out and she didn’t have to lunge heroically with nothing in her hands, when she takes him out, takes his head off before he can kill those precious kids.”

(Confession: I adore the principal of my daughter’s grammar school.  She has a hard job and too much to do.  I don’t want to add weapons training to her burdens.)

Or maybe it’s just the moral decline of the United States?  Townhall.com columnist Rachel Alexander claims that rampage killings have become more frequent and more severe as church attendance has declined.  (Is it easier to get a troubled young man to open his heart to prayer or to prevent him from getting a lethal weapon? )

Opponents of gun control advance alternative explanations for this horrific event to stall unwanted reforms.  They’ll note that no policy can protect us–or our children–completely, pointing to the massacre of 69 people by a mad gunman in Norway–only last year.

But can we do better?  Shouldn’t we try?

Here, social science should help.  You can see how the rate of gun ownership in the United States compares to that of the rest of the world, particularly other rich countries.  (We own the most guns, and the most lethal weapons.)  You can see how the rate of mass shootings in the United States, and the rate of homicide, compares to that of the rest of the world.

Freedom costs.  We tolerate lunatic ranting, obscenity, and hate in our discourse to protect free speech.  Should we tolerate our children’s vulnerability to protect easy access to semi-automatic weapons?

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