On a bleak American Sunday, with dozens dead and more injured in mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, and with at least one of those horrors executed by an apparent white nationalist terrorist, I directed a series of written questions to Gov. Asa Hutchinson.
He warranted the questions for several reasons. One was that, as a 34-year-old Reagan-appointed U.S. attorney in 1985, he donned a flak jacket and personally engaged in successful negotiations with a holed-up band of frightful white supremacists in northern Arkansas.
Later he was a deputy secretary of the federal Homeland Security Department, the nation's startup domestic terrorist-fighting agency.
In 2013, the National Rifle Association hired Hutchinson to direct its response to the Sandy Hook school shooting. He led the development of a study calling for more guns in school, by training and arming teachers and other personnel.
But then, in 2017, as governor, he resisted the NRA a tad by pushing successfully for a bill in the state providing a few exemptions from the NRA's guns-everywhere bill. The NRA initiative grew out of former Rep. Charlie Collins' guns-on-campus bill.
Hutchinson signed that NRA bill because the NRA would not accept any amendment. A simple veto would have been promptly overridden. The governor's signature would at least give him time late in the session to try to make exceptions in a separate bill, which happened.
Sometimes people judge politics as third-grade arithmetic when it can be mildly algebraic.
And then, just a few days ago, Hutchinson was quoted saying political options available to him in January 2023 after his term-limited governor's service ends conceivably could extend to a run for the presidency.
U.S. Sen. John Boozman is now indicating he won't step out of the way for Hutchinson to seek that seat. But Asa says he's doesn't intend to be done at 72. And a man who harbors even the slightest notion he might run for president ought to have something to say about mass shootings.
Finally, there was this element: On Sunday morning, Hutchinson posted on Twitter to say, "As a federal prosecutor I saw the evil of white supremacy. Its influence diminished but now we see a resurgence. ... America must ... collectively rebuke this evil."
So I sent him these questions: What, specifically, should or could policymakers do to attack the resurgence of this white supremacist evil? And were there any new gun laws conceivably worthy or passable, such as on tightened background checks and bans on semi-assault weapons? And, while I was asking, did any of President Trump's angry and divisive rhetoric on border and immigration issues bear any complicity in this white nationalist resurgence?
The governor replied to address, if not really answer, only one of those questions. He ignored the rest and said quite a bit by doing so.
The governor wrote, "Thanks for your questions. This has been on my mind for some time. Prior to yesterday's horrific attack, I have heard from others in Arkansas about their concern for safety and the increased noise from the white supremacy advocates. I have also received intelligence briefings from law enforcement. As to what action should be taken, it starts with leaders speaking out. I said something today and will have more to say in the future. That is probably enough for Sunday."
Well, no. Sunday is as good a day as any to be more specific about white nationalist terrorism, to call for a couple of sensible gun laws and to lament the president's rhetoric.
But our governor is a conservative Republican with apparent further ambition. He dares not speak of sensible gun restriction or irresponsible verbosity from his president.
No sensible person could argue that our founders, in granting a right to bear arms, meant to say the country could never restrict military-style semiautomatic weapons that would fire hundreds of rounds on crowded nightlife strips. No sensible person could argue that we shouldn't restrict certain guns because killers would get those guns anyway. That's like saying we should have no laws against murder because people are going to murder anyway. And no sensible person could excuse the tone and content of some of this president's demagoguery.
But we were talking about a Southern Republican officeholder who might have sensible tendencies but knows to keep them closeted.
Nonetheless, take note of what Hutchinson did say: People in Arkansas have been telling him they're scared by signs of creeping white supremacy. He has received police intelligence about this presence. He knows about that evil threat, having prosecuted it more than 30 years ago. Leaders bear as their first obligation the one to speak out on such things. He did so Sunday morning. He will be saying more another day.
One thing I've decided about this governor is that, on some issues, he'll think hard and eventually do as much of the right thing as he can, if modern Republicanism will permit him.
------------v------------
John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, is a member of the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame. Email him at [email protected]. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.
Editorial on 08/06/2019