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In the wake of the latest mass shooting incident that took the lives of 26 people in Sutherland Springs, Texas, has everyone had enough time to angrily blame the opposing political party, opposing lobby group, or any of the other usual suspects?
It's a question worth asking because focusing on boosting America's existing gun laws to curtail gun violence is a dead end, even if data-laden studies show that the U.S. suffers from more mass shootings than all the other countries in the world because we have the most guns.
Here's a spoiler alert: As long as Democrats insist that new gun laws and bans are the only way to stop or slow gun violence, Republicans and most of the American people will stand in their way. That's a scenario we've seen for years now.
But what if there's a way to reduce gun violence that could muster bipartisan support? A plan where actual gun control legislation is taken out of the equation and we focus on other ways to get the job done?
We have answers to those questions because two recent presidents, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, gave us the answers. And those answers were really good.
Gun violence fell in the Clinton years and it wasn't the Brady Bill or the Assault Weapons Ban that made the real difference. It was the increased funding to police departments and the boosted number of cops on the streets from his 1994 crime bill that made the real progress.
That fact has been proven many times in the years since, most prominently by an analysis published by the Washington Post in 2015.Just to summarize what happened, in October 1994 President Clinton was joined by an army of police chiefs and mayors on the White House lawn to announce the $200 million in funds being released to put 100,000 more cops on the streets. It wasn't just the boosted numbers of police but also the message that resonated. And that message was that guns or legal gun owners weren't the problem, but the fact that the police didn't have the numbers or the tools to stop the violence committed by criminals with guns.
Continue Reading: Yes, Washington can do something about gun violence right now
