Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne says Americans surrendered without a fight on the issue of gun control after the Colorado theater mass murder. He writes, “The gun lobby barely had to say a word before the media sent advocates of saner gun regulation shuffling off in defeat. In a political version of Stockholm syndrome, even those who claim to disagree with the National Rifle Association’s absolutist permissiveness on firearms lulled themselves into accepting the status quo by reciting a script of gutless resignation dictated by the merchants of death.”
But Dionne says those positions are built on “half-truths and myths.” He continues, “Arguments that gun regulation won’t accomplish anything were justified with citations of academic studies that offer mixed or inconclusive verdicts. In the wake of last week’s killings in Colorado, these studies were deployed to hide the elephant in the room: that our country is the scene of more gun deaths than any other wealthy nation in the world. And it isn’t even close.” He concludes,”Yet so many progressive donors have given up on financing the cause of gun safety, while progressive politicians, including President Obama, sit back and assume that the gun lobby will win again. There is a word for this: surrender.”