High-profile shootings fail to spur gun control

WASHINGTON — The red billboard truck traveling around the United States has a big number emblazoned on its side — 2,995 as of last week, the running tab of people murdered by guns in the U.S. since the Jan 8. shooting in Tucson that left six people dead and 13 wounded, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz.

The truck started off in New York's Times Square and will traverse the U.S. keeping an updated tally on gun deaths as part of an effort by 550 Mayors Against Illegal Guns to galvanize support for stricter gun laws.

Yet despite the highly visible campaign, there is no groundswell for additional gun regulations in the wake of the Tucson shootings or the murder of a Texas ICE agent in Mexico with a weapon purchased in Dallas.

A loose consensus has emerged that recognizes that "these killings are the shooter's responsibility — not the gun's responsibility," says Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas.

Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas, a former county criminal court judge for two decades, says: "Drunk drivers kill 25,000 people a year and we don't ban cars — we go after the driver."

The political debate has shifted from ambitious attempts to ban specific kinds of weapons such as Saturday night specials or assault-style weapons to more modest efforts to limit the lethality of legal weapons and tighten screening to prevent purchases by convicted criminals or individuals with evidence of mental illness or instability.

Even those proposals face little hope of passage in the politically split Congress.

A measure to restrict ammunition clips to 10 rounds rather than the 33-round magazine used in Tucson has 105 Democratic co-sponsors but languishes in a subcommittee in the Republican-controlled House.

In the closely divided Democratic-led Senate, no action has been taken on a proposal by Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., to stiffen penalties for states that fail to provide updated mental health reports to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System used to screen prospective gun buyers. Schumer's proposal also would close the so-called "gun show loophole" that permits some firearms sales without background checks.

"Political divisions over guns and the power of the National Rife Association have created an environment where gun control has become essentially untouchable," says John M. Bruce, a University of Mississippi scholar who wrote "The Changing Politics of Gun Control."