Last week, when I watched on television the news of the mass shooting of students in Uvalde, Texas, I experienced the usual emotions of despair, despondency, and extreme sadness that any American feels when confronted with the new gruesome reality of blood on America’s streets. Nobody with any heart and soul can feel otherwise.

Because of my status as an historian, however, my reaction this time was accompanied by a new factor.  I was aware of something about Uvalde, Texas that few people knew.

Today’s national media stars, by and large, have a pathetic paucity of historical knowledge.  Most of them are philistines when it comes to history, focusing on celebrities rather than substantive figures of historical significance.

Accordingly, the celebrities of network and cable television reported immediately that the actor, Matthew McConaughey is a native of Uvalde.  I have waited almost a full week for a journalist to report that John Nance Garner, a former Speaker of the US House of Representatives and Vice President of the United States during the first two terms of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt from 1933 to 1941, was also a resident of Uvalde.

In fact, “Cactus Jack” Garner was known as the “Sage of Uvalde.”

He had a strong New Jersey connection, serving as the liaison between the Democratic House of Representatives and President Woodrow Wilson, the only New Jersey governor ever to serve as president.  He was famous for advising Lyndon Johnson not to accept JFK’s offer to be his running mate, claiming that the Vice-Presidency “isn’t worth a pitcher of warm spit.”

On a personal level, there is something I share with John Nance Garner.  We both had the same birthday, November 22.  On the morning of his 95th birthday, November 22, 1963, JFK, campaigning in Dallas, placed a phone call to Garner, congratulating him on his 95th birthday.  A few hours later, JFK was dead, the victim of an assassin’s bullet.

Yet in relation to our present era, the most relevant feature regarding John Nance Garner was the reason for his selection as FDR’s running mate.  He was an unabashed racist, and FDR wanted to assure Southern Democrats that he would take no action offensive to them regarding African-American civil rights.

And it is the current racism in America that is the poisonous soil giving rise to our prevailing malignancy of mass shootings throughout the nation.  The race war of White Nationalists against African-American victims is the primary context in which assault weapon violence has occurred.

The White Nationalists had as their active ally Donald Trump when he was in office.  His commitment to White Nationalism was first in full view at Charlottesville when he referred to those who caused murder as “good people.”

Trump reinforced his support of White Nationalism at the second presidential debate when he exhorted the White Supremacist Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by,” and by the presence of his White Supremacist supporters in Washington on January 6, 2021, who came to the nation’s capital for the purpose of stealing for him the election and committing an insurrection against the United States government on his behalf.

Trump is out of office now, and the White Nationalists have now resorted in their race war against African-Americans, as exemplified by the mass killing in Buffalo.   Their battle cry is the Trumpism endorsed “replacement theory,” claiming that Western elites, sometimes manipulated by Jews, want to “replace” and disempower white Americans, necessitating the killing of Black people.  The Gerald L. K. Smith of replacement theory is Fox News Host Tucker Carlson. The recent mass killing in Buffalo constitute the ultimate furtherance of replacement theory.

Assault weapons are the armaments of choice of the White Nationalist movement.  And the enabler of the spread of assault weapons to these killers of Black Americans has been the vanguard of the Gun Lobby, the National Rifle Association (NRA).

The NRA has enabled America’s modern merchants of death, the assault weapons manufacturers to sell these weapons of extermination to White Nationalists for use in their war against People of Color.  The NRA has also enabled gun manufacturers to flood urban African-American neighborhoods with sales of assault weapons.  This has resulted in the increasing rate of suicide missions of People of Color against other minority members, such as in the recent Uvalde tragedy.

In New Jersey, in 1990, the new Democratic administration vowed that dominance of public safety by the gun lobby would no longer be tolerated.  In that year, New Jersey enacted under then newly elected Democratic Governor Jim Florio its landmark assault weapons ban.  In 1994, under Democrat President Bill Clinton, America enacted its first national assault weapons ban, modeled after New Jersey.

Due to political factors, the federal ban was allowed to expire at the end of its ten-year term.  There is no question, however, that such assault weapons bans, while not in themselves foolproof preventatives of gun violence, do have substantial effectiveness in reducing mass shootings.

And these bans constitute essential first steps in the major reduction of gun violence.  Subsequent measures should include background checks, red flag laws, registration, and strict magazine limitations.

Florio’s success in enacting the New Jersey Assault Weapons ban was a paramount example of political courage, for which he was honored with the Profile in Courage Award by the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in 1993.  Yet his effectiveness in defeating the gun lobby resulted from more than just his political gallantry.

Jim Florio was also a public servant of supreme political and governmental instincts.  Throughout his political career, including his renowned victories in the environmental arena, he always had remarkable foresight in evaluating the governmental and political factors that could hinder or enhance the prospects of achieving his goals.

Prior to embarking on his mission to enact an assault weapons ban, he recognized three fundamental truths regarding the NRA and assault weapons.  These truths played an essential role in his description of the assault weapons ban struggle in his political autobiography, Standing on Principle: Lessons Learned in Public Life.

The first is an unmistakable feature of today’s NRA that goes unrecognized by a substantial portion of the political media.  The primary focus of the NRA is protection of the legal and economic interests of assault weapons manufacturers, with concerns of rank- and-file gun owners being a secondary focus.

Today’s NRA is much different than your grandfather’s NRA.    Up until the mid-1980s, the NRA was a true sportsmen’s organization, dedicated to environmental preservation and gun safety.  As Florio notes in his autobiography, they actually supported Jim Florio in his 1981 campaign for governor, due to his advocacy of open space preservation, which expanded their ability to hunt.

The NRA now has as its primary interest the promotion and protection of gun manufacturers and gun dealers.  Many of these gun manufacturers are publicly traded companies whose shares are largely funded by mutual funds or hedge funds.  NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre, who sought to purchase a $6 million mansion in Dallas resembles Daddy Warbucks far more than Joe Sixpack.

The second factor on the assault weapons issue landscape throughout the past three decades has been the divergence between rank-and-file gun owners from the leadership of the NRA on significant core gun issues.

Rank- and-file gun owners treasure their Second Amendment rights.  They use their weapons primarily for hunting, personal protection, and target shooting, and they have little or no use for assault weapons.  Nor do they necessarily believe that background checks are a hinderance to them, since they are law abiding citizens who are fully confident in passing same.

Polls show that on such fundamental issues as gun registration, concealed carry restrictions, disqualifications from gun ownership, age restrictions, and gun dealer accountability, rank-and -file gun owners are highly supportive of such measures, despite the opposition of NRA leadership. Yet most surprising is the position of gun owners on bans of assault weapons.  Over 40 percent would support banning military-style, semi-automatic assault weapons, and high-capacity magazines.

The third fundamental Florio truth was that contrary to the fraudulent claim of the NRA, the Second Amendment does not create a right to own and use an assault weapon.

Florio is a very strong constitutionalist.  Yet he notes in his autobiography that there is nothing in the Second Amendment that precludes governmental restrictions on gun ownership and the types of guns available.

And perhaps the major irony of Jim Florio’s decades long advocacy of the assault weapons ban was the vindication of his Constitutional position by a conservative, originalist Supreme Court Justice, the late Antonin Scalia.

Scalia was the author of the majority opinion in the 2007 U. S. Supreme Court decision in District of Columbia v. Heller.  In Heller, the Supreme Court held, in a 5-4 decision, that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to possess a firearm for traditionally lawful purposes, unconnected with service in a militia.  Such “traditionally lawful purposes” includes self-defense within the home.

The Heller opinion also validated the Constitutionality of the 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Ban.  Specifically, the Court affirmed the absolute right of government to prohibit the ownership and usage of guns that are not typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes, such as short-barreled shotguns.

It is the consensus of most political observers that Florio’s success in enacting the assault weapons ban resulted in his defeat in his 1993 reelection bid. Yet Florio himself provided the best perspective on his defeat.

On the night of Tuesday, November 2, 1993, Florio conceded the election to his Republican challenger, Christie Whitman.  In his remarks, he used a phrase from former President Harry Truman: “In the long run, if you do right, it will turn out alright.”

Truman left office in 1953 a deeply unpopular president.  Yet in every contemporary rating of presidents by historical scholars, Truman ranks in the top ten as either a great or near great president.

And so shall it be with Jim Florio.  His success in enacting the assault weapons ban, in itself, will result in future historians ranking him as one of New Jersey’s great governors.  And when you combine his profile in courage as a Governor with his achievements in the environmental field as a Congressman, it can safely be said:  Jim Florio was New Jersey’s greatest 20th century public servant.

Alan J. Steinberg served as regional administrator of Region 2 EPA during the administration of former President George W. Bush and as executive director of the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission.