America at gunpoint

Ever since the brutal mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando last Sunday, Florida has become the focus of concerns about easy access to guns, and the mayhem such access can produce. America’s powerful National Rifle Association (NRA) has for four decades been the strongest force shaping lenient gun laws and it has turned Florida into a state gun owners have cheerfully nicknamed the “Gunshine State”.

Thanks to relaxed gun control laws at least one in every 49 Floridians has a concealed weapon carry permit. “Our gun laws are so permissive that even an ISIS-inspired terrorist like Omar Mateen could exploit easy access to military-derived weapons. A country is courting disaster when a semiautomatic AR-15 rifle can be purchased in under 10 minutes,” said Mark Schaffer, a member of a gun control group called Everytown for Gun Safety. Now American legislators are feeling pressure to take some action in the aftermath of the Orlando nightclub shooting but don’t hold your breath.

Major new gun control legislation is still not likely to pass in Congress. We are more likely to see “a compromise bill” to impose limited gun restrictions in the face of pressure from Democrats and public rage over the Orlando mass shooting.

So far Republicans and Democrats have offered four separate proposals for vote next week to expand background checks on gun buyers and curb gun sales for people on terrorism “watch lists”. But the proposals seem dest-ined to fail because of partisan politics and a requirement that any proposal muster 60 of the 100 votes in the US Senate.

However, Senate Republicans are feeling pressure to address the fact that people whose names surface on terrorist watch lists can easily buy guns so Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine is trying to hammer out a proposal considering a more tailored approach.

“If you are either on the no-fly list or the selected list, which is the list where you are subjected to additional screening before you are allowed to board a plane, then you would be prohibited from purchasing a gun,” Ms Collins told reporters while sharing her proposal.

Ms Collins’ proposal would flag for the FBI gun purchases by anyone who had been on the designated watch list within the last five years.

“The FBI is immediately notified that you have bought the gun and that you formerly were on one of these two lists. Most likely that is going to lead them to put you back under surveillance... That’s an important provision,” she said.

The New York Times reported that even less likely to pass is a measure that would extend background checks on gun buyers — largely because of hotly contested Senate races in a bitter election year.

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has scrambled the right-left divide with a sudden openness to some new gun measures directly aimed at terror suspects. In a move that seems to modify his strong support for gun rights, he said he would ask the NRA to back a ban on people who are on terrorist watch-lists from buying guns. Mr Trump has used the Orlando atrocity to play up his idea of a temporary ban on Muslims entering America.

The gun control issue is deeply divisive and there have been no major restrictions passed since 1994, when Congress imposed a ban on semi-automatic assault weapons. That ban expired after 10 years. Talk of reining in America’s gun culture is politically risky. The powerful NRA and its political allies have fought for permissive state gun laws for over four decades. The NRA traditionally leans toward the pro-gun Republican side.

The US Constitution’s Second Amendment, which protects the rights of Americans to keep and bear arms, is defended tooth and nail by the NRA and gun manufacturers with deep pockets.

By working on the Republican base, the US gun lobby has been successful in blunting drives to restrict the sale of high powered weapons. To change the laws, Mr Obama needs to get the Congress to act and so far the Republican opposition has blocked all reforms of the federal gun laws, including a return of the ban on assault rifles passed under President Bill Clinton, but which expired in 2004 under President George W. Bush.

Democrats themselves have become wary about pressing for gun control after Al Gore lost his home state of Tennessee. They are aware that gun control is a lightning-rod issue, and they don’t want it to injure them. During the Democratic primary, however, Hillary Clinton, who favours tighter gun restrictions, routinely criticised Bernie Sanders for siding with the NRA. In 2013, Mr Obama issued 23 executive orders related to gun violence in an attempt to take whatever modest steps he could without requiring a Congressional vote. But it looks like gun control is all but a lost cause for his presidency.

“I truly hope that senators rise to the moment and do the right thing. I hope that senators who voted no on background checks after Newtown have a change of heart,” Mr Obama said in Orlando after the tragedy.

“And then I hope the House does the right thing, and helps end the plague of violence that these weapons of war inflict on so many young lives.”

Indian students who have worked hard to reach American universities hardly expect to get caught in a shooting rampage. But the spike in campus shootings and gun violence has put them in the crosshairs. At least nine Indian students have been killed at US universities since the April 2007 campus shooting at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg.

The Orlando shooting comes on the heels of a campus shooting at UCLA where Mainak Sarkar, a 38-year-old IIT-Kharagpur alumnus, killed his wife in Minnesota and then drove to Los Angeles, where he shot engineering professor William Klug on the UCLA campus. The shooting sent shockwaves through the large Indian student community in the US.

Uttara Choudhury is editor, North America, for Network 18’s Firstpost news site and a writer for Forbes India