美枪击案不会引发枪支管理变革

当地时间20日凌晨，美国科罗拉多州丹佛市《蝙蝠侠3》首映礼现场发生枪击事件，导致12人死亡，数十人受伤。此次枪击事件再次引发人们对于美国枪支管理的讨论，不过分析人士认为这并不会带来任何实质性的变革。丹佛市长在枪击案之后的讲话中对枪支管控只字未提，美国总统奥巴马和共和党总统候选人罗姆尼取消了周五的竞选演讲，但对枪支管理这一话题也未有提及。唯一对此直接表态的是纽约市长布隆伯格，他在广播讲话中呼吁奥巴马和罗姆尼就减少枪支暴力的问题表态，并指出美国人拥有的枪支比人口还多。不过，大部分美国人都认为严格的枪支管理法律并不是解决枪支暴力问题的办法。今年4月由路透社和益普索市场研究集团进行的一项调查显示，大多数美国人都赞成使用致命武器自卫的权利，三分之二的受调查者都对全国步枪协会持支持态度。反对枪支管控人士还用去年的挪威枪击案做反证，称在枪支管控严格的欧洲也无法杜绝那样的悲剧发生。

Denver Mayor Michael Hancock is a member of a coalition called Mayors Against Illegal Guns, but when he issued a statement expressing shock and horror on Friday after a mass shooting at a Colorado movie theater, he had nothing to say about gun control.

Neither did President Barack Obama nor his Republican rival Mitt Romney, though both canceled campaign speeches on Friday and expressed sorrow for the victims of the shooting rampage.

The killing of 12 people at a midnight screening of the new Batman movie in the Denver suburb of Aurora may spark a fresh round of soul-searching on America's relationship with guns but few predict any real change in the law.

That's because gun control advocates have largely lost the argument against the much more powerful gun lobby, and politicians know the issue is toxic with voters.

One of the few politicians who has long taken a stand is New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire backer of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, a coalition of mayors advocating for stricter rules on gun sales and ownership.

Speaking on WOR Radio on Friday, Bloomberg called on Obama and Romney to tell the public what they would do to reduce gun violence.

"Soothing words are nice, but maybe it's time that the two people who want to be president of the United States stand up and tell us what they are going to do about it," he said.

"I don't think there's any other developed country in the world that has remotely the problem we have," Bloomberg said. "We have more guns than people in this country."

Most Americans, however, do not believe that tougher gun laws would be the solution. Gallup polls over the last two decades show the percentage of Americans who favor making gun control laws "more strict" fell from 78 percent in 1990 to 44 percent in 2010.

The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, the largest and oldest of America's gun-control groups, is a fraction of its peak size. The center and an affiliated political arm had revenue of $5.9 million in 2010, the most recent year for which information is publicly available - down 27 percent in three years.

In the same year, the powerful pro-gun lobby, the National Rifle Association (NRA), and its various components took in $253 million from individuals, gun makers and sellers and other supporters.

Even Democratic supporters of efforts to keep a tighter rein on weapons were relatively mum after the shooting.

Democrats in conservative and rural states fear alienating gun owners and the NRA, and crucial presidential battleground states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Virginia, Iowa and North Carolina have large populations of enthusiastic gun owners.

"We're in the summer before a presidential election and I really don't foresee any serious discussion of gun control," said Kristin Goss of Duke University, the author of "Disarmed: The Missing Movement for Gun Control in America."

Some supporters of Democrat Al Gore still believe his support for gun control laws played a role in his loss of the 2000 presidential election, and "memories of lost elections loom large for politicians," Goss said.

Congress has not approved any major new gun laws since 1994, and a ban on certain semiautomatic rifles expired in 2004. Some states have loosened gun laws to allow gun owners to carry concealed weapons or adopted "Stand Your Ground" self-defense laws.

A Reuters-Ipsos poll in April found most Americans supported the right to use deadly force to protect themselves, and two of every three respondents had a favorable view of the NRA, which marshals thousands of activists to oppose even small-scale gun regulations and punish lawmakers who challenge them.

"There are strong forces in American politics, led by the National Rifle Association, that have prevented any real changes in gun control laws in years," said Cal Jillson, a political analyst at Southern Methodist University in Texas.

"In the short term, this incident will give some liberal Democrats an opportunity to talk about gun control in an environment where people are listening, but in the long term it doesn't change anything," he said.

Other high-profile gun-related mass shootings in recent years - the Virginia Tech shootings in 2007 and the shooting of U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords and others in Arizona in January 2011 - also sparked some short-term debate but little action.

Opponents of stricter gun control point to events such as last year's killing of 77 people in Norway, which like the rest of Europe has much tighter controls on guns than the United States, as evidence that gun laws don't stop such tragedies.