Washington Needs a Vertebrae Transplant

More members of Congress today, by a large margin, have more college and graduate degrees than members did 20 years ago. The current members are generally more media savvy and more socially polished than their often rough-edged predecessors. But what they lack — and what the earlier guys had a lot more of — is backbone.

You want proof? Let's begin with the assault rifle, the one modeled after the military weapon and built to fire hundreds of rounds of ammunition in a matter of seconds. This assault weapon was the firearm of choice in mass murders just in the last month of four police officers in Oakland, three Pittsburgh police officers, 13 civilians in Binghamton, N.Y., and 10 more in Alabama.

What is the response from official Washington? Solemn expressions of concern and promises of prayers for the families and the communities drowned out by the National Rifle Association's mantra that "guns don't kill people" — peanuts do.

Washington and the leadership of both political parties in the city need a collective vertebrae transplant. Just listen to what one of the country's great conservative leaders, the late Sen. Barry M. Goldwater, R-Ariz., said about these assault weapons in 1990: "I am completely opposed to selling automatic weapons. I don't see any reason why they ever made semi-automatics. I've been a member of the NRA. I collect, make and shoot guns. I've never used an automatic or a semi-automatic for hunting. There's no need to. They have no place in anybody's arsenal."

So much for the sportsman's argument for assault rifles of the kind that the Binghamton killer used to fire, according to police, 98 shots in one minute.

Shortly before Goldwater made his position so abundantly clear, the then-attorney general of California, John Van de Kamp, a Democrat, stood on the floor of the California state assembly in Sacramento holding in his hands an AK-47 semi-automatic weapon and said to the legislative body's 80 members: "Ladies and gentlemen, take a look at your watches and start counting.

You are lucky that I am the attorney general and not some nut. Because if I had the ammunition, I could shoot every member of the assembly by the time I finish this sentence — about 20 seconds."

But 1994 will forever be remembered as the year when Democrats lost their heart for standing up to the gun lobby. The Democratic Congress and President Bill Clinton had enacted a ban on 19 types of automatic weapons. That ban had passed the Democratic House on a 216 to 214 vote, guided by the then-Clinton White House advisor (and now Obama White House chief of staff) Rahm Emanuel — and it was blamed by many Democrats for their party's November loss, for the first time in 40 years, of House control.

In the middle of the recent killing sprees, 65 House Democrats, mostly from rural and conservative districts, sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder announcing they would "actively oppose any effort to reinstate the 1994 ban (on assault weapons)."

President Obama has long been on record for a permanent ban on assault weapons. But one respected Capitol Hill Democrat, a longtime champion of gun control, despairs: "These (recent) killings have, unfortunately, not moved the needle."

What would be required to get this Congress to act? "It would take at least a major massacre of kindergarteners."

So, as of today, the NRA rules. Today's congressmen apparently value their own seats and survival more highly than they do the lives of the police officers who, as they patrol their beats to keep our neighborhoods safe, are regularly outgunned by criminals armed with automatic assault weapons. Where do you go for a vertebrae transplant?

To find out more about Mark Shields and read his past columns, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.

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COPYRIGHT 2009 MARK SHIELDS