First it was 14 children announced dead at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, Tuesday. Unimaginable. Then it was 18. Then 19. Plus two teachers killed. All by an 18-year-old wearing body armor and carrying a rifle.
Every needless firearm death is tragic. But when children are involved it’s different.
Your mind goes there: to the savage pain of a parent realizing that a goodbye kiss before their child jumped on a school bus or scooted out of the backseat of the car is the last fleeting memory they’ll ever have. But you fight that impulse, not wanting to contemplate the nightmare that every parent knows is possible but tries not to dwell on.
Every needless firearm death is tragic. But when children are involved — 2nd graders, 3rd graders and 4th graders — it’s different.
Once the pain has subsided there is the gnawing feeling of anger and frustration because you know … nothing will change.
It’s awful enough that people die senselessly, but it’s all the more frustrating that it will keep happening, day after day after day after day. Earlier this month it was Buffalo. Before that Biloxi, Mississippi; Chicago; Duluth, Minnesota. Last year it was Oxford, Michigan; Indianapolis, Boulder and Atlanta. And hundreds of shootings in between that have long since been forgotten, except by those directly affected. It’s the powerlessness to make it stop that is so uniquely devastating.
President Joe Biden captured that emotion Tuesday night. Few public figures can more acutely appreciate the pain felt by those parents in Uvalde, Texas, than Biden, who lost his wife and young daughter in a fatal car crash and then decades later lost his son Beau.
The president was his usual empathetic self. That wasn’t surprising. What was more revelatory was the raw emotion he expressed. “Where in God’s name is our backbone, the courage to do more and then stand up to the lobbies?” he practically shouted. “When, in God’s name, are we going to stand up to the gun lobby?”
Before Biden spoke, video of an emotional Steve Kerr, coach of the Golden State Warriors, coursed across social media. Kerr, whose father Malcolm was gunned down in a 1984 terrorist attack in Beirut, was an emotional wreck. “When are we going to do something?” he demanded to know. “I’m tired. I’m so tired of getting up here and offering condolences to the devastated families that are out there.”
These tragedies keep happening … and then nothing changes. Then there is another tragedy … and nothing changes. Twenty first-graders gunned down in a school in Connecticut. Nothing changes. Seventeen murdered in a high school in Florida. Nothing changes. Twenty-three killed in a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, and nine in Dayton, Ohio, on back-to-back days. Nothing changes. Fifty-eight concertgoers shot down in Las Vegas, more than 500 injured.
Nothing changes.
Sen. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., admitted as much Wednesday morning when he said there’d be no imminent vote on two background-check bills the House has passed and sent to the Senate.
Schumer said he was “sympathetic” to calls for a vote because “I believe that accountability votes are important. But sadly, this isn’t a case of the American people not knowing where their senators stand. They know.” He said, “Americans can cast their vote in November for senators or members of Congress that reflect how he or she stands with guns.”
America, we are frequently told, is the greatest country in the world. If we set out minds to it, there’s no challenge we can’t tackle. And yet the near-daily drumbeat of carnage continues.
The little bodies in Texas weren’t even cold before Republicans threw their hands up and said nothing could be done.
The little bodies in Texas weren’t even cold before Republicans threw their hands up and said nothing could be done.
“We can’t stop bad people from doing bad things,” said Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, the state’s highest law enforcement official.
Yet, somehow every other country in the world has figured out a way to stop bad people from carrying out mass shootings.
Texas Lt. Gov Dan Patrick said, in referring to elementary schools, “We have to harden these targets.” Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, declared, “We know from past experience that the most effective tool for keeping kids safe is armed law enforcement on the campus.” That’s not true. The most effective tool for keeping kids safe is keeping guns out of the hands of people who shouldn’t have them. Tuesday’s shooter was “engaged by law enforcement” and it didn’t stop him from killing 19 children and two adults. There was a recently retired police officer working as a security guard at the supermarket in Buffalo where 10 people died last week. He was one of that gunman’s victims. At Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, there was an armed security guard on campus. He stood outside and did nothing. In the Dayton shooting, the gunman was shot dead by police just 32 seconds after he opened fire. By then he had already killed nine people and wounded seventeen. Are we supposed to take solace in that he didn’t kill more? It wasn’t just Republicans professing hopelessness. Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., a co-sponsor of legislation creating universal background checks, told reporters he would do “anything I can” to move “common sense” gun legislation forward in the Senate, but he ruled out eliminating the filibuster so it could pass on a majority vote. “You would think there’d be enough common sense,” Manchin said. “The filibuster is the only thing that prevents us from total insanity.” Joe Manchin told reporters he would do “anything I can” to move “common sense” gun legislation forward, but he ruled out eliminating the filibuster. Keeping in place an antiquated Senate procedure that lets a minority of senators block legislation that could save countless lives and is supported by 90 percent of Americans is the definition of insanity. But apparently not to Manchin. The simple fact of the matter is that there is something that could be done to decrease gun violence: Congress could pass gun control reform, starting with legislation mandating universal background checks. But Schumer essentially called it a waste of time. There will be no vote soon. Nothing will change. The searing pain we all felt Tuesday when hearing the news out of Texas is a pain we’ll feel again. And again and again and again.
Michael Cohen is an MSNBC columnist. He is also the publisher of the newsletter Truth and Consequences and hosts the weekly podcast That ‘70s Movie Podcast. 
