By Bruce S. Ticker
PHILADELPHIA — President Trump’s rhetoric that might have inspired killers like Patrick Crusius in El Paso and Connor Betts in Dayton, Ohio, last Saturday (Aug. 3) along with Mitch McConnell’s refusal to move gun control legislation, are certainly disgraceful, but their behavior can perhaps be taken up a serious notch. They did not pull the triggers, but they symbolically passed the ammunition.
Senate majority leader, McConnell has done nothing to review and vote on legislation that might have prevented the shooting deaths of worshipers at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh and Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, S.C., or students and teachers at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. So far, Trump has had no intention of signing such legislation.
Trump and McConnell knew for years that 320 million Americans are vulnerable to gun violence, and they had the power to protect their fellow citizens, but they stood by and permitted the ongoing massacres of innocent people. So did anyone else in Congress who failed to act, which means most Republicans.
It is unrealistic to expect any police department to arrest Trump, McConnell and other members of Congress, but maybe a case can be made. Their conduct corresponds with offenses such as criminal negligence and reckless endangerment. They knew about the potential hazards and they let them persist.
Some detractors would no doubt accuse them of murder itself. Lots of blood has splattered on their hands.
The Jewish community was directly attacked six days prior to the El Paso and Dayton tragedies, though to a far lesser extent, when a 69-year-old synagogue worshiper was shot in the leg several times while standing outside Young Israel of Greater Miami in North Miami Beach, according to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Two shooting incidents, one fatal, occurred in between the El Paso and Dayton incidents in Northeast Philadelphia, where I live. The locale of these shootings is home to a still substantial Jewish population.
The shooting death of Mahendra B. Panjrolia, 60, by an assault rifle at 9:30 p.m. set off a manhunt leading to Cambridge, Mass., where his son, Sohan Panjrolia, 31, was arrested, according to reports in The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Northeast Times. Police said that after his father was killed Sohan Panjrolia fled with the weapon in a car that was later found nearby, according to media reports.
An hour earlier and a few miles away, two young women were wounded during a party attended by 100 people, many of whom were notified of the event by a post on Instagram, police told the Inquirer. Police recovered a loaded firearm in a parked car after a person in the back seat kicked a firearm under the front seat.
Other officers recovered a .357 magnum revolver loaded with six live rounds contained in a dark duffel bag after a man wearing a ballistic vest was seen throwing a dark-colored bag into the back of another car and started walking away, the Inquirer reported.
Before the firearm was discovered, he denied he had a firearm at the party, where he said he worked security, according to the Inquirer.
During the same weekend, 55 people in Chicago were shot, The Chicago Tribune reported.
New York, New Jersey, California and other states can enact as many laws to restrict gun use as they want, but they cannot prevent smuggling in guns from states with lax gun laws. That some states facilitate smuggling guns into states with responsible laws also corresponds with criminal negligence and reckless endangerment. Some folks might argue that these are acts of war.
The El Paso massacre constitutes an international incident now that Mexico is demanding that we protect Mexican citizens who visit the United States. They talk as if they are thinking of resuscitating General Santa Anna, the infamous Mexican leader who pillaged the Alamo and came dangerously close to seizing control of Texas.
Trump’s vocal encouragement of racism is nothing less than theater of the absurd, but it is difficult to determine how his words translate to tragedy. Yet it takes no genius to conclude how Trump and McConnell’s inaction translates into nine deaths in Dayton and 22 in El Paso, plus 55 shootings in Chicago. Trump, McConnell and every member of Congress who accommodates them should be held accountable.
In the believe-it-when-I-see-it department, it helps that Trump and McConnell claim to be considering universal background checks, but let’s not expect much. Yet.
Especially when we weigh McConnell’s disingenuous words in Friday’s New York Times: “I think the urgency of this is not lost on any of us, because we’ve seen too many of these horrendous acts.”
A sense of urgency? For McConnell and his Republican brethren, that would be a stunning change.
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Ticker is a freelance writer based in Philadelphia.