Amid the everything-all-at-once nature of news under President Trump, things get lost. Many don’t matter. Others should. A lot.
In that latter category are the murders of 58 innocent people at a country music festival in Las Vegas. That shooting, the single largest mass casualty incident in modern American history, happened 22 days ago.
The days following the shooting were dominated by angry and passionate calls to action directed at Congress. Gun control advocates insisted something must be done. Even the National Rifle Association signed on to changing regulations regarding bump fire stocks — legal add-ons used by the Vegas shooter that turned a semi-automatic rifle into an automatic one.
And then, nothing. Check out this Google Trends search data on “bump stocks”:
Interest in bump stocks surged in the wake of the Vegas shooting on Sunday, October 1, but it almost as quickly faded. By October 14 — less than two weeks after the shooting — the search interest in bump stocks was back to pre-shooting levels.
That lack of interest has coincided with a major slowdown in congressional action. California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein has introduced a bill that would ban bump stocks. On the House side, Florida Republican Rep. Carlos Curbelo and Massachusetts Democratic Rep. Seth Moulton have co-sponsored a similar bill. But congressional Republicans seem uninterested in moving a ban forward, preferring to let the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives handle it.
Without public attention or pressure, it’s uniquely possible, of course, that nothing at all happens. And this after the largest mass shooting in modern history.