Editorial: It’s no longer ‘too soon’ to connect school shootings to the callous indifference of certain politicians

Wisconsin Republicans consistently choose to excuse the mass killings of our children, even though this ongoing carnage is preventable, not inevitable.

Within minutes of news that there was a deadly school shooting in Madison, social media sites were flooded with posts from politicians offering their “thoughts and prayers” — including from some of the same  politicians who have a consistent record of blocking the kinds of gun safety measures that could end the widespread killing of our children.

“My sincere condolences and prayers for all the victims of the tragedy at Abundant Life Christian School,” posted Republican Sen. Ron Johnson. “I will continue to closely monitor the situation.”

Here’s a fair question for the senator: He’s monitoring the situation for who, exactly?

It can’t be for the people who were shot yesterday or the victims of the mass shooting before that, or the mass shooting before that one—or any shooting victims since April 2013.

That’s when it became obvious that our national government was broken—with politicians like Johnson blocking our nation from doing even the bare minimum to keep our children safe, in the wake of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut in December 2012.

It is a national stain that we endured the massacre of 20 children ages six and seven along with six adults, only to watch a minority of US senators — Johnson included — block the most basic gun safety measures, the kind supported by 70% to 90% of Americans. A simple measure for universal background checks initially got 55 votes, a clear bipartisan minority. 

But the Senate is rendered impotent by its continued embrace of the filibuster, something that shouldn’t be a thing and was not even remotely supported by our nation’s founders—so the measure was sunk by 45 “no” votes that included a handful of cowardly Democrats. 

Years later, Gov. Tony Evers tried to rally bipartisan support for a solution at the state level in his first-ever call for a special session of the Wisconsin Legislature in the fall of 2019. Why not try? A Marquette Poll that summer on universal background checks showed 80% support versus 16% opposed.

“This is what the majority of people want,” Evers said. “There are common sense solutions that we know can save lives because they have already done so in states that have adopted them.”

But Republicans gaveled in the special session, then gaveled it back out in less than a minute, accomplishing nothing.

In the years since, as the body count grows, every mass shooting is now accompanied by the unseemly chest-thumping of a crowd that seems to believe the only way to fix mass shootings in a country with nearly 400 million guns is to grow it to 500 million. When that doesn’t work, they will again reassure us that 600 million guns will get the job done. They go on offense after each tragedy—first to say that it’s always “too soon” to tie the latest deaths to political inaction. Then they say that trying to do something, anything about mass shootings is an “attack” on the 2nd Amendment rights of gun owners. 

It is, of course, a concocted, make-believe “attack” compared to the actual attacks on children, teachers, and others caught in the crosshairs. But claiming to be fighting for gun owners’ liberty rolls off the tongue easier than, “Sorry, kids, but I have some large donors who think your deaths are only going to help them sell more guns.” 

The National Rifle Association has spent $5 million from 2010 to 2023 just on legislative races in Wisconsin. And Sen. Johnson alone has been given at least $2.6 million in his Senate career by the NRA.

So when Johnson says he’s going to “closely monitor the situation,” we now know he’s likely monitoring the situation on behalf of his gun lobby patrons so that he can once again be part of a minority that blocks any meaningful action that would save lives.

It is never too soon to ask the senator how much more monitoring of bullet-riddled children it will take before he stops making excuses for mass murderers and realizes these deaths are preventable, not inevitable.