Calls for action on gun controls after Aurora massacre

It is perhaps the nearest Barack Obama has come to supporting stricter gun controls, declaring that assault weapons, like an AK47, belonged “in the hands of soldiers, not in the hands of criminals.” There should also be stricter controls, he said, to stop the mentally unbalanced getting their hands on firearms.

There was context, too, from the president, keen to point out that the Aurora tragedy was not the only kind of gun violence blighting the nation: the same number of people are gunned down, he said, every one and a half days. But although he has long called for the ban on assault weapons to be reinstated, there have been no specific proposals, and none appear to be in the pipeline.

There is not much sign of action in Congress either: Senate majority leader Harry Reid flatly ruled out the prospect of anything relating to gun controls this year: no time in the schedule, he said. The Washington Times reports that when asked if next year’s agenda might squeeze something in, he quipped back: “Nice try.”

Mitt Romney wasn’t getting into specifics either, when quizzed about gun laws by NBC’s Brian Williams on the eve of his London Olympics visit. There was, he suggested, no need for any new legislation: “Just having a law saying someone can’t do a bad thing doesn’t always keep a person from doing a bad thing.”

Call for action

Now one of the country’s leading groups campaigning for stricter gun controls, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, says it is up to political leaders to take the initiative. The group’s president, Dan Gross, said both Obama and Romney would be asked about the issue at the first Presidential debate in October: “and the public will expect them to offer solutions.”

Michael Moore, who directed the anti-gun movie Bowling for Columbine, has also urged Obama to “be the leader”, saying he felt most Americans agreed with him, that things had got to change. And Rupert Murdoch – not someone often mentioned in the same paragraph as Michael Moore, took to Twitter to declare: “We don’t need AK 47s to defend ourselves. Nobody does.”

However, a glance through the opinion polls reveal that most Americans are overwhemingly wedded to their Second Amendment rights. Nicholas Kristoff, in the New York Times, points out that when Gallup first took soundings on the issue, in 1959, sixty percent of those they surveyed wanted to ban handguns. In the latest annual survey, conducted last October – less than half that number are in favour: an all time low.

Gun sales surge

In the immediate aftermath of the Colorado tragedy, it seems there was a rush to buy guns: a familiar pattern following such a terrible event, say police. The Denver Post reported a forty percent increase in the number of people seeking the background checks needed before purchasing a gun: one gun shop owner said sales had leapt 300%, while another said requests for his firearms safety training courses were “off the hook”.

In an election year, bold statements on controversial policies are never going to be a realistic prospect: the lobbying might of the National Rifle Association is legion. Obama nodded towards that power, in his speech at the National Urban League: “Too often, those efforts are defeated by politics and by lobbying and eventually by the pull of our collective attention elsewhere.”

A moment of national mourning, after a horrendous tragedy: not a moment, though, for political action – clearly a risk too far, in a close-fought election year.

Felicity Spector writes about US affairs for Channel 4 News