Opinion

The president spoke last night about the valley of the shadow of death in which the massacre of innocents recurs over and over. It was an especially graphic speech. At one point, Joe Biden informed viewers that parents of victims had to give authorities DNA samples for the purpose of identifying their kids. They were literally shot to pieces.

It was graphic for a reason, I think. Biden wanted to move Americans emotionally – to get us to think about the costs of freedom as much as freedom itself. If a majority of us conclude the costs supersede the principle, perhaps the most intransigent of Senate Democrats would support a carve-out of the Senate filibuster to pass gun-law reforms.

During his Thursday night address to the country following a staggering series of mass shootings across the country, President Joe Biden mostly focused his attention on the need for better gun laws. But — likely due to the fact that Republicans will block even the mildest of restrictions on gun access — Biden did toss a bone in the direction of the mental health discussion.

"There's a serious youth mental health crisis in this country," he noted, pointing out that he already proposed legislation that would "provide more school counselors, more school nurses, more mental health services for students." (He's referring to his Build Back Better plan that was killed by Republicans, with the assistance of Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona.) Republicans love to talk up "mental health" after mass shootings, but, as most everyone understands, they don't mean it. It's just a deflection from talking about gun control, because they know full well their radical "guns everywhere" views aren't exactly popular with the public. In the real world, as often as they can.

In 1994, Congress enacted a ban on assault weapons that stayed in force for 10 years. It was allowed to sunset in 2005 thanks to Republican control of the federal government and the influence of the National Rifle Association (NRA).

Here’s an underrated detail about the ban that ought to resonate today in America: It worked.

On May 2, 1967, the destinies of Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, and Ronald Reagan collided. The day saved untold thousands of lives.

At the time, California was an open-carry state with few gun restrictions. Governor Reagan was on the steps of the State Capitol to meet and share lunch with a group of visiting 8th graders when Newton, Seale, and nearly 30 other Black Panthers pulled up out front in a small caravan of cars.

The long-awaited January 6th committee public hearings have finally been scheduled. The first one is set for next Thursday, June 9th, in prime time. The committee previewed their plans for next week, announcing on Thursday that they will "present previously unseen material documenting January 6th, receive witness testimony, preview additional hearings, and provide the American people a summary of its findings about the coordinated, multi-step effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and prevent the transfer of power." They seem to be very carefully choreographing the event, even drawing out the suspense by not naming the witnesses until next week.

The hearings, Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., said, will "tell a story that will blow the roof off the House." We can only hope that is not unjustified hyperbole. These hearings are an important public record of an attempted coup that the whole country must see.

USA Today ran a frontpage story this morning about “the gun lobby” fattening its impact “far beyond the NRA.” It rounds up the various groups united in opposition to gun-law reform. Altogether, last year these organizations spent nearly $16 million on lobbying, a record.

The story was on the frontpage, because spending by “the gun lobby” is topical. The president, in mourning two teachers and 19 children shot to pieces in the Uvalde massacre, demanded the Republicans, especially in the Senate, stand up to “the gun lobby.” The USA Today report provided valuable context. There’s more here than the NRA.

When I moved to New York City in 1981, I first stayed at the YMCA, and every day I encountered street hustlers on 34^th Street, taking people's money with the shell game. You know how it goes: A pea or a little ball is placed under one of three cups and moved around rapidly; you are enticed to bet on where it ends up. (And after the first "lucky" guess, you are invariably wrong.)

I've been thinking about those shell games because of the endless, reverent talk of "textualism" and "originalism" by conservative, Federalist Society–approved justices on the Supreme Court.

On its surface, the verdict in the Amber Heard and Johnny Depp trials makes no rational sense. Not just because the jury clearly ignored the actual evidence at hand when finding Heard guilty of defamation and rewarding Depp for his frivolous lawsuit with an eye-popping $15 million. But also because the jury awarded Heard $2 million in her countersuit against Depp for defaming her with a conspiracy theory accusing her and her witnesses of lying and her photographs and her other documentation of all being fake. How can the jury both believe her and not believe her?

Part of the problem is that it's likely that the jury, which was notably not sequestered, was influenced by the incoherent but robust pro-Depp sentiment heavily peddled online and throughout right-wing media. Because of this, as many commentators pointed out, this verdict should be viewed not just as a reaction to the facts at hand. It's part of a larger backlash to the #MeToo movement and other movements like Black Lives Matter, which are increasingly under fire for making people feel bad about the widespread injustices that persist in our society. That's why it's not quite right to argue that the debate is over whether or not we "believe" women. Opponents of #MeToo believe women just fine. They're just sick of hearing about it.

According to an article published this week by NBC News, President Biden is upset with his staff. It seems the president believes some members of his own administration have undercut his message on occasion, thereby leading to his extremely low poll numbers.

Joe, it seems, can't get a break — and he thinks his own people are the cause.

In a June 2021 episode of On the Media, host Brooke Gladstone described a common debate in media circles over conspiracy theories.

Don't put those liars on the air!
I hear you, but sometimes I have to tell people what's going on!
You're spreading their propaganda for them!
It's already spread and having real-world effects!
Well, it wouldn't spread if you denied them a platform!
Gatekeepers don't have that kind of power anymore!
They might if they worked together!
That just drives it underground and it gets even worse!

The conspiracy du jour was election denial. Do you engage with election deniers, platforming and potentially legitimating them? Or do you ignore them at risk of having them spread with no critique?

Texas law enforcement authorities said last week that Salvador Ramos got into Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas, by way of a door propped open by a teacher. From there, they said, Ramos found a classroom with two teachers and 19 fourth-graders. He shot them all to pieces.

The same officials said Tuesday the door was not propped open. Nor was it propped open by a teacher. Instead, the teacher closed it. The problem was the door didn’t lock, they said. That’s how Ramos got in.

Democrats are gearing up for quick policy battles in the House and Senate over “gun safety.” They should also be preparing for a decades-long war over “gun control.”

In 1977, Harlan Carter and a group of his friends staged a coup within the senior ranks of the NRA, flipping it from a gun-safety-oriented sportsman’s club into a “no compromise” (Carter’s phrase) lobbying and PR group for the gun industry.