WASHINGTON //The midnight massacre of 12 cinemagoers in Colorado has shocked a nation growing uncomfortably used to random mass shootings and has raised renewed questions about gun ownership in America.
But, as the man accused of the shooting, James Eagan Homes, 24, had his first day in court yesterday, polls show that during the past two decades, the trend is for fewer Americans to favour stricter gun controls. A debate that starts after every similar killing in the US looks likely to end as it always does: with no political appetite for enacting legislation to curb access to guns - or even just some guns.
There is a "conspiracy of silence" from both Republicans and Democrats, say gun-control experts, because gun-control legislation is seen as a vote loser. A Clinton-era automatic assault weapons ban - which expired in 2004 - has been blamed in part for the Democrats losing control of the House of Representatives in 1994, and then for Al Gore failing in his bid for the presidency in 2000.
Gun-control legislation is thus off the political agenda, said Kristin Goss of Duke University's School of Public Policy, in North Carolina, and author of Disarmed: The missing movement for gun control in America, published in 2006.
"Since 2000 … both Democrats and Republicans have engaged in more or less a conspiracy of silence, changing the subject whenever gun control gets even remotely close to getting on the agenda," she said in an interview.
It is certainly unlikely to become an issue in November's elections. The massacre caused both presidential candidates to agree to take a break from what was shaping up to be a highly vitriolic contest for the highest office in the country. But Barack Obama, the US president, who before becoming president was a vocal supporter of stricter gun-control laws, didn't mention the word "gun" once on Sunday as he visited with the families of the victims of Friday's massacre in Aurora, Colorado.
He has not made gun-control legislation a feature of his presidency, and Jay Carney, his spokesman, on Sunday said no new legislation was under consideration. This in spite of the two other mass shootings in the past two years alone: the January 2011 Arizona spree that saw six killed and 12 wounded, including a Democratic congresswoman, Gabrielle Giffords; and a Texas birthday rampage involving an estranged husband that left six dead including the shooter, in July 2011.
Avoiding the issue also suits Mr Obama's Republican rival, Mitt Romney. Mr Romney signed into law a ban on automatic assault weapons when he was governor of Massachusetts, putting him at odds with a conservative Republican base that sees a right to bear arms as an essential part of American democracy.
In part, American politicians are responding to public sentiment. Dianne Feinstein, the Democratic senator who was behind the 1994 legislation and an avid gun-control advocate, on Sunday conceded the presidential campaign was a "bad time" to raise the issue.
Both presidential candidates should give the subject "a lot of consideration", the California legislator said on Fox News on Sunday. But "there has been no action because there is no outrage out there, people haven't rallied forward."
Quite the contrary. There are an estimated 270 million guns in the hands of civilians in the United States, making Americans the most heavily armed people in the world per capita.
An April Pew Research poll found Democratic feelings on gun control largely consistent since 1993, but with sharp rises in the proportion of Republicans and independents opposed to such controls, among Republicans from 45 to 72 per cent.
According to Gallup, from 1991 through 2011, support for stricter gun controls in the general population has nearly halved from a high of 78 per cent to just over 43 per cent. The proportion of those who want the laws to stay the same, meanwhile, has more than doubled over the same period from less than 20 per cent to just under 44 per cent.
Over the same period, gun crime in America, which peaked in 1990, has halved, further bolstering the argument of gun-rights proponents who have largely succeeded in framing the debate around the issue as a question of fundamental freedoms.
Gun rights activists and organisations, notably the National Rifle Association, NRA, have been successful in promoting the idea that the right to gun ownership is central to a peculiarly rugged American notion of democracy. It is a question of personal freedom and allowing citizens the ability to exercise their right to "rise up against tyranny", as enshrined in the Second Amendment to the US constitution.
This notion has been backed by money. The NRA is one of the most active lobbying organisations in Washington, according to Open Secrets.org, a website that follows money in politics. The website ranks the NRA as one of America's lobbying "heavy hitters", having spent some 19 million dollars in direct contributions to political campaigns since 1989, 82 per cent of them in support of Republican candidates.
Gun control advocates, meanwhile, have struggled to erect a similarly resonant counter narrative, said Ms Goss. Random mass shootings may seem to make the case for stricter gun controls self-evident, but letting them speak for themselves has proven not to be enough, she said.
"The other side has been able to take that logic and turn it on its head, so you hear people talk about how if more people had guns in that theatre, the shooter could have been neutralised before he killed so many people.
okarmi@thenational.ae
