“A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction, and in either case, he is justly accountable to them for the injury.” ― John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
On Monday, Jim Acosta interviewed Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN). Topics included the debt ceiling negotiations and what to do about gun violence and mass shootings. On the national fiscal picture, Burchett promoted the patron-protecting, Republican orthodoxy that it was liberal, out-of-control spending that had burdened the US with a crippling debt that would destroy whatever future America’s grandchildren would enjoy.
Burchett did not mention the role tax cuts for billionaires and cash-soaked companies played in the deepening sea of red ink. And Acosta did not ask him. Instead, he turned the conversation to mass murder and gun violence, specifically the murder of five people in Texas by a drunk neighbor with an AR-15.
To prime the pump, Acosta played a video of the Congressman on the Capitol steps after the mass murder of six in Nashville. In it, Burchett claimed that Congress was helpless in the face of serial massacres.
“We've got evil in this country. Everybody needs to turn down the rhetoric a little bit because all it does is gin it up on both sides. Then they point the finger, and nothing happens. If you think Washington is going to fix this problem, then you’re wrong. They are not going to fix this problem. They are the problem.”
Having established that the taxpayers are paying Burchett $174,000 a year plus expenses to say he is a problem and unable to do anything, Acosta asked the impotent Representative why it “doesn’t concern you that other countries do not have this level of gun violence.” Burchett replied,
“Other countries don’t have our freedom either. Yes, the United States of America. My father fought for this country. My mama flew an airplane. My mama lost a brother fighting the Nazis. My dad fought the Japanese. We have incredible freedom in this country. When people abuse that freedom, that’s what happens.
Does Burchett have a passport? Has he been anywhere? What freedoms does he think Americans have that the English, Germans, Australians, and Canadians do not have? His entire argument rests on the supposition Americans have more liberty because they can more easily own a range of guns and are free to die by gunshot.
His myopic arrogance also extends to military service. Is he unaware that many countries besides the US fought in WWII for the same freedoms he claims are unique to the US? And that countries like the United Kingdom paid a far higher price for their freedom than America?
Acosta then asked Burchett why he says Congress is useless when so many expect it to do something about “mass shooting after mass shooting after mass shooting.” Burchett replied by referring back to his Capitol Steps declaration of ineptness, saying,
"I was probably speaking more from a Christian perspective. I went on to say we need real revival in this country. I feel like we have turned from the Lord. And I know that maybe makes people’s heads spin off sometimes, when they hear someone like me say that.
In reply, Acosta told the Bible-thumper: “They have Christianity in other countries, and they don’t have mass shootings.” He should have also asked why there are more gun deaths in the Bible Belt than in the religion-lite North East.
Burchett went back to his safe space.
“Well, they don’t have our freedom either — the Second Amendment.”
Acosta once again asked why Burchett does not fix anything, telling Tim: “It’s your job.” Burchett replied with the usual conservative boilerplate.
“She [the Tennessee school schooter] broke over 20 laws. What are you going to do? Now you have people that can print guns. Timothy McVeigh, 150 pounds of fertilizer and diesel fuel. He killed over 100 people, a bunch of innocent folks. We’ve got evil in this world. We gotta address it.
I will recast Burchett’s argument. ‘Why bother to toughen drunk driving laws? We already have laws against drunk driving. And we still have drunk drivers.’ We do. But since 1980, led by MADD, a campaign to introduce new drunk driving laws and a shift in attitude to drunk driving — along with safety measures for cars — has reduced the rate of drunk driving deaths by 65%. And in doing so, the authorities confiscated no cars from legal drivers.
His claim that you can now make guns at home is irrelevant. It is as dumb as saying that home meth labs obviated the need for better illegal drug laws.
If that was not sufficiently irrelevant, Burchett thinks referring to a domestic terrorist and fertilizer bombs has some bearing on the gun debate — because “evil”. WTF? But I will play along. Burchett says we have to address evil. Fine. Let us start by keeping guns out of the hands of evil people.
Burchett then presents more conservative misdirection.
"We had a bill last year [in the Senate and the House] that would have put armed guards and it was blocked. The President said ‘I want the guns.’
Now why wouldn’t you want to put more people — secure — you enjoy that at CNN. You can’t walk into the headquarters of CNN. There is an armed guard out front."
Acosts shoots down that nonsense by pointing out you cannot put an armed guard at every house on the off-chance that a shooter may show up, as he did in Texas, killing five people. Let us also note no Democratic President has instigated a gun grab.
Burchett replies with ignorance and some additional, “What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know the situation there [Texas]. But tell me how you get the guns back? There are so many guns out there. I think we have a mental health issue in this country. We ought to address that.
They are not talking about wheat production in Azerbaijan. The massacre in Texas was headline news. Burchett should damn well know about it.
The mental health argument is as dumb as the rest. There are mentally ill people in every country — in America, they can buy guns. NB: the vast majority of mentally ill people are not violent.
As for the impossibility of getting guns away from criminals, I refer Burchett to President Kennedy’s speech at Rice University in 1962.
"We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win, and the others, too."
Kennedy fought in WWII, and the monumental effort needed to achieve a hard-imagined goal did not deter him. If JFK were alive today, he would have thought Burchett was a miserable coward.
Burchett finishes by muddying the waters.
“And these red flag laws. Some say they work. Some say they don’t. I’d like to see some real numbers on that. Remember we had an assault weapons ban in this country, and the Justice Department came back and said it is not reducing mass shootings at all."
We would all like to see some real numbers on gun violence. However, and Burchett chooses not to mention this, for two decades the Dickey amendment coerced the CDC into dropping all research on gun violence. Unsurprisingly, the amendment was high on the NRA’s wish list in 1997.
I also challenge Burchett to produce an independent analysis that says the assault weapons ban did nothing to reduce mass shootings in the US. He will not. Conservatives rarely use facts to construct an argument.
Here are the raw numbers.
Here is the video of the Acosta/Burchett interview. The conversation on guns starts at 3:35