Bullies and big guns

There’s a lot of focus on teaching kids about bullying. There are laws against bullying. No name-calling weeks in schools. We urge kids not to be intimidated.
But they shouldn’t look at the grown-ups for role models. Not when it comes to guns. On that matter our leaders pretty much cave before the gun lobby, one of the biggest bullies in Washington.
The supreme bully is the top gun of the NRA, Wayne LaPierre, who after the Newtown, Connecticut school slaughter called for more guns, rather than fewer guns. And, how about arming all the teachers?
It was such a nut-cake idea that had we not all been in shock and in tears we might have laughed him back into his bunker.
But he’s still lurking, snarling, growling and saying boo.  Along with his lieutenants. Bullies don’t do it alone. Bullies need backup, in this case a gun lobby goon squad. To threaten and mock. To make people afraid. To argue others into submission. To make people lose their resolve.   
We can say we don’t like bullies in our society except we let them run the country when it comes to guns. Last week 45 U.S. senators, most of them Republicans, bowed before Big Guns to block legislation requiring background checks for gun purchases and other sensible gun safety measures.
It doesn’t matter what the parents of the 20 first graders slaughtered in December want. The bullies won’t budge.
Bullies rely on bystanders not getting involved. And there are too many bystanders in Congress, including some weak-willed Democrats who first said they want to do something about gun control but now worry that the bully might “sight-in” on them.
For the bully to prevail he must create a real or perceived power imbalance. He uses coercion and intimidation to get his way. I got that from a government website designed for teachers and parents to help kids identify, prevent and deal with bullying in the schools. It’s called stopbullying.gov. Among the many suggestions is to change the attitude of adults who tolerate bullying. The bully mentality needs to be challenged early or it will become accepted as normal.
Unfortunately the government has no such anti-bullying website for itself.
A bully is only powerful as long as there are cowards. Bullies — in this case the NRA and gun manufacturers who let the NRA do their  dirty work — make people give in even when they know something is wrong.
Now we have an environment  in which “cowards can succeed,” said California congresswoman Jackie Speier who calls her colleagues “gutless” because “they know in their heart of hearts”  the right thing to do. “But they are more concerned about their reelection.”
Some are unafraid to stand up. New York, Colorado and Connecticut have enacted new gun control laws. And across the country earlier this month more than 130 groups from Arizona to New Hampshire rallied for common sense gun legislation.
But in Congress the bullies got their way. On the same day as a shocked nation watched another bloodbath in America, this time in Boston, the U.S. Senate voted against gun laws. You have to wonder, were they following NRA orders or do they just not give a damn?
There was great resolve after we buried those first-graders and their teachers.
But, so far, common sense, the desire of 90 percent of Americans to do something about guns,  a sympathetic president and the pleas by parents of dead babies don’t seem enough to stand up to the NRA.
Sorry about all this, you 20 first graders. Your country, our leaders and honestly, most of us don’t seem to have the guts. You didn’t even live long enough to hear the lesson on bullying.
Susan Swartz is an author and journalist in Sebastopol. This will be her last column while she goes on hiatus to work on a writing project.