In the past six years, mass shootings have occurred in schools and movie theaters; at a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina; at an office Christmas party in San Bernardino, California; and at an LGBT nightclub in Orlando, Florida. All the while, congressional Republicans have blocked any tightening of federal gun control laws.
On Wednesday, a group of Republican members of Congress were at a morning baseball practice outside Washington when, according to eyewitness accounts, they were attacked by a gunman with a semi-automatic rifle. The FBI said the shooter was armed with both a rifle and a handgun, though it did not specify which types. Four people were wounded, including Steve Scalise, the third-ranking Republican in the House of Representatives.
Here’s a look at elements of the attack that will likely be contested over the next few days:
1. Will this change Republican views on gun control?
In the past, assassination attempts have helped propel major federal gun control laws. The Gun Control Act of 1968 followed John F Kennedy’s assassination by Lee Harvey Oswald, who used a gun he ordered in the mail. The 1993 Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, which set up a national background check system for gun purchases, was named for James Brady, the press secretary who was paralyzed in a 1981 assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan.
On Wednesday, however, Republican congressman Mo Brooks followed a searing description of the shooting – of hearing bullets flying a few feet above his head as Capitol Hill police returned fire, of desperately helping tend to wounds – by saying: “I’m not changing my position on any of the rights we enjoy as Americans.”
“There are adverse aspects to each of those rights we enjoy as people,” he said, speaking to ABC. “And what we just saw here is one of the bad side effects of someone not exercising those rights properly. But we’re not going to get rid of freedom of speech because some people say some really ugly things that hurt other people’s feelings. We’re not going to get rid of fourth amendment search and seizure rights because it allows some criminals to go free who should be behind bars.”
Another Republican representative, Chris Collins of New York, told a local news station he now planned to carry a handgun at public events.
Though the shooting happened in Virginia, Barry Loudermilk of Georgia criticised Washington gun laws. “If this had happened in Georgia, he wouldn’t have gotten too far,” he said, according to the Washington Post. “I had a staff member who was in his car maybe 20 yards behind the shooter, who was pinned in his car, who back in Georgia carries a 9mm in his car æ He had a clear shot at him. But here, we’re not allowed to carry any weapons here.”
2. What happened in the last push for gun control?
After the attack on the Pulse nightclub in Orlando last June, the most costly mass shooting in recent American history, House Republican leaders refused even to allow a vote on gun control proposals. The Senate voted down two Democratic pieces of legislation, one to expand background checks on gun sales, the other to block anyone on a government terror watch list from buying a gun. Two Republican alternatives also failed to reach a vote.
House Democrats protested by holding a 26-hour sit-in on the floor of the House,led by John Lewis, a civil rights leader who marched with Martin Luther King Jr. When Republicans cut off video footage, Democrats livestreamed their protest and drowned out Republican leaders, singing “We shall overcome” and holding up images of victims of gun violence. The protest ended, however, without forcing a vote. Subsequent activism has achieved little.
3. Has there been any recent debate in Congress?
The National Rifle Association (NRA) is a close ally of Donald Trump and spent at least $30m, more than any other outside group, to help put him in the White House.
Trump told NRA members this year: “You came through for me and I am going to come through for you.” So far, the president and the Republican-controlled Congress have taken some modest steps on a pro-gun-rights agenda.
Trump signed off on a rollback of an Obama-era rule barring certain mentally impaired recipients of social security benefits from buying or owning guns. This was fiercely criticized by Democrats but researchers, disability advocates and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) all sided with Trump and the NRA.
A congressional hearing about whether to deregulate gun silencers was postponed after news of the Virginia shooting broke. A much more sweeping and substantive change to gun laws may be debated soon. As a candidate, Trump endorsed an NRA-supported effort to make it easier for gun owners to carry concealed weapon across all 50 states – legislation that could essentially wipe out local restrictions on gun carrying.
4. Have gun control campaigners achieved anything?
There have been some changes at state level, including expansions of background checks for sales between private citizens in Washington state and Nevada, and success in blocking state laws that would erase restrictions on gun carrying, including on university campuses.
One big push this year is a joint effort across 20 states to pass extreme risk protection order laws, which would give family members and law enforcement officials a way to petition a court to temporarily bar at-risk people from owning or possessing firearms or ammunition. The legislation is designed to prevent gun suicide and mass shootings by people identified as imminently dangerous to themselves or others.
5. How does the Virginia shooting fit broader trends?
According to the Gun Violence Archive, there have been 154 mass shootings in 30 states in the first 165 days of 2017. The nonprofit defines “mass shooting” as an incident in which four or more people are shot or killed, not including the shooter. Three people and the shooter died at a UPS depot in San Francisco on Wednesday.
This definition of “mass shooting” is controversial, with some critics arguing that it lumps together many kinds of gun violence. More than 30,000 Americans are killed with guns each year, about two-thirds of them in suicides.
There are stark racial disparities: gun suicide victims are overwhelmingly white men while the majority of gun homicide victims are African-American. About half of more than 10,000 Americans murdered with guns each year are black men and boys. According to a Guardian analysis, there are also dramatic geographic inequalities: 26% of all gun homicides in 2015 were clustered in areas that represent only about 1.5% of the country’s total population.
6. What role does misogyny play in mass shootings?
Some of the ugliest mass killings have been perpetrated by men with histories of hostility toward women. Wednesday’s shooting was no exception.
Omar Mateen, who killed 49 people in Orlando, was accused by his ex-wife of beating and imprisoning her. The Virginia Tech shooter was twice investigated for stalking. The man who killed three people at a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood in 2015 had a record of domestic violence.
When Everytown for Gun Safety analyzed mass shootings from 2009 to 2016, it found that 54% involved intimate partner or family violence.
“There is a stomach-turning predictability to it,” said Monica McLaughlin, deputy director of public policy at the National Network to End Domestic Violence. “Whenever we hear of events such as these, those of us who work on domestic violence know there will be a history of domestic violence uncovered.”
The 1996 Domestic Violence Offender Gun Ban made it illegal for a person facing a protective order or convicted of abusing their co-parent or legal spouse to purchase a firearm. But the law does not apply to unmarried partners – gun safety advocates call this the boyfriend loophole – or any guns the perpetrator already owns. A few states have closed the gap for unmarried partners and passed laws forcing abusers to turn over firearms. Internet and gun show purchases can however be made without a background check.
7. How important is the kind of gun the shooter used?
Military-style rifles are often used in high-profile mass shootings, making them a frequent target of gun control legislation. A 1994 ban, which lawmakers allowed to expire in 2014, focused on such “assault weapons”.
Rifles are very rarely used in gun murders, according to FBI data, and former Democratic staffers have admitted the assault weapon ban policy was more symbolic than substantive. After the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook elementary school in Connecticut, in which 20 children and six adults were killed, even a group of Sandy Hook parents decided not to endorse an assault weapon ban, though they did favor limits on high-capacity ammunition magazines.
Researchers say limiting ammunition capacity was the most substantive part of the assault weapon ban and that it might still save some lives.
On Wednesday morning, Senator Rand Paul said that without the response of Capitol Hill police, the Virginia shooting “would have been a massacre, because there’s no escaping a guy who has several hundred bullets”.
Paul has voted against two measures that would have placed limits on military style rifles and high-capacity ammunition magazines. Last year, he defended gun rights as an essential freedom “to shoot at the government when it becomes tyrannical!”
