Nothing Has Changed Since Sandy Hook and That’s a Damn Shame

The Daily Beast

27 January 2023 at 4:14 am·3-min read

As frustration builds over the seemingly endless number of Americans killed in mass shootings, Danielle Moodie, co-host of The New Abnormal, couldn’t contain her frustration on this week’s episode.

“There have been so many tragedies since Sandy Hook and in my opinion, nothing has really changed,” Moodie vented to Gloria Pan, the senior vice president at MomsRising, a pro-gun control group.

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Pan countered by saying all is not lost—and that despite the lack of political leadership over the issue, the Sandy Hook event “jumpstarted the opposition to the NRA and their plans. Up until then there wasn’t really an effective gun safety movement.”

“The vast majority of Americans do want stronger gun laws,” Pan says. “It’s just about how you talk about it. Ninety percent of Americans support universal background checks to make sure that people who really would not be responsible gun owners don’t get their hands on it. However, the people who have the power to vote for stronger gun laws… they’re answering to a different, more subset of constituents.”

Pan, who has been working on gun safety since the Sandy Hook shootings, said Americans are in for a fight if they’re to make change for real.

“We can bring our heartbreak, we can bring our stories to Washington and we can demand this change. But it’s not just not going to happen because the opposition to any kind of reform is just so strong. And the opposition to it is rooted. It’s somewhere else. It’s rooted in what they perceive as, as constitutional rights and stories about, you know, what America is about, going all the way back to our founding, which, you know, I think deserves a second look.”

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Also on the podcast, Radley Balko, an expert on police militarization in America who writes The Watch substack, discusses the danger of no-knock warrants and whether Breonna Taylor’s death has changed anything.

“I’m extremely cynical about this stuff and I've been covering it for about 20 years now. I think that the backlash and reaction to the Breonna Taylor case, and George Floyd, has inspired more substantive reforms than we’ve ever seen, or at least since I’ve been covering this issue.

“Louisville did pass a ban on no-knocks. It’s not the law I would’ve written and I think it’s a little bit too easy to get around, but the idea… if you told me five years ago that we would be talking about 30 cities and five or six states passing bans on no-knock grades because of the overwhelming public support for that position, I would’ve told you you were outta your mind.

“I still think we have a long way to go, but… for the first time, probably in my career, I’m not completely a hundred percent cynical about the prospects of things changing.”

Listen to The New Abnormal on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon and Stitcher.