Republican said, “ . . . it’s not guns that are to blame, it’s ‘the darkness of a human soul.’ “
By Ben Giles | Arizona Capitol Times
Every day since 17 students and faculty were gunned down in a Florida high school, Arizona’s Democratic legislators have pleaded with their Republican colleagues to do something, anything, to make sure such a mass shooting never happens again.
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Those pleas, in the form of daily speeches on the Senate floor, have mostly been met with silence.
A response here or there has deflected the issue away from gun control, Democrats’ preferred course of action, as Republican lawmakers speak up about mental health issues, make claims of violent video games influencing American culture or lament a lack of God in schools.
As Sen. Sylvia Allen, R-Snowflake, put it, it’s not guns that are to blame, it’s “the darkness of a human soul.”
That leaves Arizona with the status quo. The GOP-controlled Legislature hasn’t seriously considered passing gun control legislation in years, even after a gunman wounded former Arizona Congresswoman Gabby Giffords and killed six others in Tucson in 2011. Instead, they passed a measure recognizing the Colt single-action Army revolver as the official state gun.
This time could be different.
