At a Moral Crossroads on Gun Safety, The Senate Takes a Definitive Wrong Turn

Last updated on April 19th, 2013 at 06:58 pm

A moral crossroad, the wrong road taken.

Watching the Newtown families cry on camera after our government put corporate interests above their dead children is beyond anything I can describe. The Newtown families cried on camera after the announcement that background check legislation failed to garner the votes in the Senate on Wednesday.

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This is a dark moment for our country; a moment where the dank, putrid money running our legislators unveiled its morally bankrupt agenda: Profits before Our Children.

I am deeply ashamed for the Senators who voted no today on the background check legislation, four of whom were red-state Democrats. There are those who would argue that the party must come first, but I say what party? This should be an issue for all Americans. This is the time to put aside differences. This is the time to cast out the rotting threats of NRA money used in ads against our legislators.

I say what party, because as someone who frequently votes Democrat, there are times when politics do not matter. There are times when “winning” in the future does not matter.

I say what party because while most Republicans serve as nothing more than NRA puppets, four courageous Republicans did stand with the Democrats to vote yes on background checks. For the parents and loved ones of all of the many recent gun victims, this isn’t about politics.

For the parents and loved ones of future gun victims, how could our lawmakers vote no on a stripped down, basic piece of legislation that requires a background check? This bill infringed upon no one except those who should not own a gun.

This moment reflects a shockingly deep moral depravity rotting away at the core of our government, courtesy of corporate lobbyists masquerading as a grassroots movement. A majority of people, including NRA members, supported background checks.

We didn’t get them – even in the Senate – because the NRA strikes fear into our legislators.

Today is a day for grieving what could have been, what should have been, and the reality of our lawmakers’ betrayal courtesy of the vicious, relentless corporate greed behind the NRA.

The Right is busy parroting the NRA’s talking points accusing Democrats of using dead children as props, but the truth of the matter is that today was about those kids. They are the reason we have a government, not profits from gun sales. Our government is supposed to look after those children. They were not the props. If they were alive today, we wouldn’t have to be debating whether the right sees them as “props”.

It takes a true sociopath to believe such a thing. To look into the eyes of those parents and be incapable of seeing things from their perspective, to only see paranoid visions of how one day you might want to buy a gun when you shouldn’t, to pretend there’s a national gun registry when it was prohibited in the bill — to do these things in the face of such palpable, unspeakable horror is to behave as a sociopath.

The only tools in the room are NRA puppets, so callous in their money grab that they can’t even shut up in the face of a stunning, tragic loss.

If you can’t see that the children are the real purpose, then chances are good that you are the prop. If you are standing against the children while clinging to your imaginary fears and you see your “rights” to own a gun sans background check as the singular most important right there is, then you are the prop. You are an easily manipulated tool of corporate greed. You are on the wrong side, and you will have to live with that if ever you wake up from your NRA-induced stupor.

Image: Alex Wong/Getty Images, Newtown parent in front of Senate Judiciary, Feb 27

Sarah Jones

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