Leid Stories - Mass Murder, Mass Media and Race Politics (Part 4) - 06.16.16

It took 15 hours of pleading by Senate Democrats yesterday before Republicans agreed to consider two gun-control measures that would add controls on licenses and background checks for people buying guns. Sen. Chris Murphy, the junior senator from Connecticut, noting that almost four years after the massacre of 20 schoolchildren and six staff members at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in his home state, “we have done nothing, nothing at all to reduce the likelihood that that will happen again to another family.”

But it did, just three days before Murphy’s filibuster. Forty-nine people were killed, and 53 others wounded, in a mass shooting on June 12 at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla. Omar Mateen, 29, the alleged lone gunman, mowed down his victims with a military-style assault rifle and a high-powered handgun, even though he had been, at one point, on two federal “watch” lists.

Leid Stories discusses the quandary that plagues gun-control legislative efforts in the United States.