Opinion

Outrage fades so quickly

University of Central Florida Police Chief Richard Beary shows the type of gun found in the room of a UCF student during a press conference in Orlando, Florida, Monday, March 18, 2013. Police found a former male student dead from what appears to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Law enforcement officers investigating the incident found a handgun, an assault weapon and improvised explosive devices, a campus spokeswoman said. (Gary W. Green/Orlando Sentinel/MCT) less University of Central Florida Police Chief Richard Beary shows the type of gun found in the room of a UCF student during a press conference in Orlando, Florida, Monday, March 18, 2013. Police found a former ... more Photo: Gary W. Green, McClatchy-Tribune News Service Photo: Gary W. Green, McClatchy-Tribune News Service Image 1 of / 3 Caption Close Outrage fades so quickly 1 / 3 Back to Gallery

It's as if the Dec. 14 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School never happened.

For all the consternation and news conferences about gun violence on Capitol Hill - "something must be done," so many politicians have vowed - the past week offered yet another illustration of the influence of a National Rifle Association that seems determined to ensure that nothing meaningful will get done.

Majority Leader Harry Reid's decision to exclude an assault-weapons ban from the Senate's gun-violence package was merely the highest-profile example of the gun lobby's enduring influence. Reid counted just 40 senators, at most, who were prepared to ban the type of assault weapon used in the slaughter of 20 schoolchildren and six adult staff members in Newtown, Conn., and 12 people in an Aurora, Colo., movie theater last July.

Reid surrendered to political pragmatism, fearing that inclusion of a ban on military-style weapons would doom the chances of passing a bill that would expand background checks and make gun trafficking a federal crime.

Less publicized, but equally disturbing, was the congressional extension of restrictions on funding for gun research and the collection and use of crime data.

One might think the post-Newtown concern about gun violence would cause Congress to reconsider constraints on research or whether the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives should be allowed to identify patterns in the data it collects about gun-related crime.

Think again.

Those NRA-backed riders once again were tucked into a continuing resolution to keep the federal government running through September.

Rep. Mike Thompson, the St. Helena Democrat who chairs the House Gun Violence Prevention Task Force, said he and others have been trying "for years and years and years" to delete those gun-lobby riders that work against public safety.

"That stuff, it's just terrible," Thompson said Friday. "It's unexplainable. There's nobody who can justify it."

Except, of course, Second Amendment absolutists who fear that the research and data might lead to the conclusion that sensible restrictions actually do save lives.

So Thompson and many others, knowing there was no chance of stripping those riders out of the stopgap spending bill, were left with a grim choice: "Do we shut down the government, or suck it up and leave them in for a short period of time?" he said.

They sucked it up.

It's critical to note that one of the gun lobby's favored arguments against new laws - such as reinstatement of the assault-weapons ban that expired in 2004 - is what they cite as a dearth of evidence that they make a difference. They suppress research even as they condemn is paucity.

Congress has not expressly prohibited all gun studies, only research to "advocate or promote gun control." The effect, however, has been sweeping. It does not take a Ph.D. to hypothesize that research on guns - how criminals are getting them, what types they are using, the effects of licensing and registration - could be seen as leading to controls. Funding for gun-violence research by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention went from $2.5 million a year in the early 1990s to just $100,000 a year today.

In an effort to lift the fear of that rider, President Obama recently issued an executive order that authorized the CDC to resume research on the causes of gun violence. It remains to be seen whether Congress will come through with the dollars to support that research into an epidemic that is killing 30,000 Americans a year. Its unwillingness to undo more than a decade of "see no evil" riders is not a promising sign.