What Sen. Kyrsten Sinema knows about mass shootings that Democrats don't want to admit

Rampage shootings are so second nature in America they’ve created their own cliches.

A grieving mother was the first to call out Republicans on one of theirs.

Susan Orfanos spoke with anger and tears after her adult son, Telemachus, had survived the 2017 Las Vegas mass shooting, only to get killed a year later in a rampage shooting in Thousand Oaks, Calif.

She told a TV audience, “I don’t want prayers. I don’t want thoughts. I want gun control.”

Since then, gun-control Democrats have been throwing “thoughts and prayers” right back at conservative politicians who reflexively offer them after mass shootings.

They do this liberal retort so much it has become its own tired refrain.

Democrats blame the GOP after shootings

Something else that has grown tiresome is Democrats grabbing the megaphone in the highly charged moments after any new mass shooting to instantly blame Republicans.

Soon after a gunman killed eight people at an outdoor mall in the Dallas suburb of Allen, Texas, on Saturday, Democrats wasted no time naming the culprit.

Republicans did this.

Texas U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar, a Democrat, tweeted: “Children’s bodies stacked on a sidewalk. A child’s face blown off. My God, what will it take for my @GOP colleagues to join us and finally act? I’m keeping the Allen community in prayers. And I also pray that my country demands change.”

California Democrat and U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell tweeted, “A 5-year-old died today because @tedcruz continues to choose killers over kids.”

They miss the role they play in this

This emerging cliché of “blame Republicans and wash our hands of the entire crisis” is not going to solve the hydra-headed problem of gun violence.

I write this as someone not unsympathetic to the left’s call for greater gun control. America has an estimated 400 million guns today, more guns than there are people in the country.

Every day in America brings fresh evidence that there are too many guns in the hands of evil and irresponsible people. That is a human and policy failure with no easy fixes.

By reflexively blaming Republicans for every new mass shooting in America, however, Democrats inflame the problem while ignoring their own contribution to it.

Why do so many own guns? Because of fear

I can hear Democrats recoiling at my suggestion that they have anything to do with America’s gun problem.

Oh please, let me count the ways.

I could start with leftist Hollywood and Big Tech and their movies and video games that glorify guns and red mist more than any alt-right Rambo who poses with the kids and their AR-15s at Christmas time.

But let’s not.

Instead, ask yourself, why do so many Americans own guns?

Much of it is fear.

They fear crime. They fear the breakdown of society that leads to greater threats to them and their families.

They fear our dystopian big cities that have defunded and demoralized police departments.

Talk of taking away guns, and sales spike

But most of all, they fear politicians who they suspect want to take away their guns and leave them defenseless.

As the left-leaning Brookings Institution reported in July 2020:

“Past spikes in firearms sales have occurred when individuals worried about possible restrictions. Following President Obama’s calls to impose modest restrictions on firearm sales in response to the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting and the San Bernardino terrorist attack, sales jumped by 3 million and 1.6 million, respectively, beyond the expected level over the few months of elevated sales. 

“Protests demanding gun control legislation led by students in Parkland, Florida, the site of the most recent high-profile school shooting, led to another spike in sales of 700,000.”

Lest Democrats believe these avid gun-buyers are all Republicans, understand that some of the largest cohorts buying guns in the accelerating years of 2020-2021 were traditional Democratic Party constituencies.

Roughly half of those purchasing guns were people of color, and roughly half were women, according to a survey published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

What Sinema knows about the gun debate

Today’s Democrats do not appreciate the self-perpetuating nature of gun rampages that lead to fear, that lead to calls for more gun control, that lead to more gun purchases to load up before the Democrats try to abolish firearms.

With so many guns in the country, it’s going to take years to solve U.S. gun violence.

It won’t happen by screaming at each other.

The greatest breakthrough in gun legislation in nearly 30 years came last summer after two Democratic senators, Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema and Connecticut’s Chris Murphy, used the bipartisan coalition Sinema began building as soon as she arrived in the U.S. Senate to pass new gun laws.

The legislation improved red-flag laws and restrictions on private gun sales, and it keyed on some of the associated mental-health issues.

Thanks to Sinema, Murphy and the Democrats and Republicans who joined them, the answer was clear: The way to make progress on guns is to work across the aisle.

Sinema talks: With Arizona officials about rollout of gun law

Yes, Democrats have legitimate arguments that too many conservatives fetishize guns and seem unmoved by all the carnage.

But the public blame game that surfaced again after Allen, Texas, is counterproductive.

The way to make headway on guns in America is well known and recently demonstrated.

First, we build trust.

Phil Boas is an editorial columnist for The Arizona Republic. Email him at phil.boas@arizonarepublic.com.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Democrats aren't blameless in mass shootings, either