Body count piles up amid gun insanity

Columbine High School, Colo., April 20, 1999: 15 dead, 21wounded. That was probably the first time an entire nation recoiled and then mourned and then demanded changes to gun laws.

Oh yes, changes were made. In the years since — the recurring mass shootings at elementary schools, middle schools, high schools, colleges and universities — several U.S. states, either through state legislation or court rulings, have broadened laws, allowing the carrying of concealed weapons on public postsecondary campuses.

They’ve bought in to the National Rifle Association mantra that guns don’t kill people, people kill people, and the best way to prevent people from killing people is to put more guns in the hands of people.

This was Wayne LaPierre, executive vice-president, speaking at an NRA press conference one week after the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School: “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”

Not banning assault weapons that serve no hunting or gaming purpose. Not tightening the rules to allow for more thorough background checks on individuals purchasing firearms (tick this box if you’re mentally ill, tick this box if you’re on drugs.) Certainly not banning handguns entirely. But guns for the good guys in every American school: “I call on Congress today to act immediately to appropriate whatever is necessary to put armed officers in every single school in this nation.”

After the atrocity at Sandy Hook school, in Newtown, Conn., NRA membership spiked and NRA funding contributions skyrocketed. Play on fear and the gun lobby grows ever more powerful, richer, its intimidation of elected officials more strong-arming. Red Lake Senior High School, Minn., March 21, 2005: 10 dead, at least 7 wounded. What occurred at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Ore., on Thursday marked the 45th school shooting in America this year, 274 days into 2015.

Since Newtown, according to an extensive analysis by Everytown for Gun Safety — a non-profit organization that advocates for gun control — there had been at least 95 school shootings as of the end of 2014. Of the K-12 school shootings in which the shooter’s age was known, 70 per cent (28 of 40 incidents) were perpetrated by minors. From among those where it was possible to determine the source of the firearm, nearly two-thirds of the shooters brought their guns from home.

Chris Harper Mercer, the 26-yearold identified as the gunman who murdered nine people and wounded at least seven more at Umpqua, an individual who had been kicked out of the military earlier in his life, had an arsenal of weapons close to hand. A spokeswoman for the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms, Tobacco and Explosives, told a news conference that 13 weapons belonging to Mercer had been recovered — six at the school, seven at his residence. All have been traced to legitimate firearms dealers.

These were not illegal guns. Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Va., April 16, 2007: 33 dead, 25 wounded. What religion are you? the Oregon shooter asked of his victims. If you’re a Christian, you’re going to see God in the next few seconds.

Everybody asks: Why does this keep happening?

I’m not even sure the why of it matters anymore. The why of it feeds into the ego of the perpetrators, who walk out of their front doors as nobodies and are splashed across media within hours as somebodies. From obscurity to infamy at the press of a trigger.

Mostly males, predominantly white — though Mercer appears to be biracial — feeling maligned by life, scapegoating broader society for their failures, nursing grudges real or imagined, losers. And cowardly, because they orchestrate their spectacles against those who don’t have any chance to fight back, to defend themselves.

Mental illness is too easy an explanation — and demonizing of the countless many who struggle with those conditions and do no harm.

And none of these aforementioned cold-blooded facts even takes into consideration the mass shootings that have happened elsewhere, in churches and movie theatres, in fast food restaurants and a nursing home. Northern Illinois University, Feb. 14, 2008: 6 dead, 21wounded. U.S. President Barack Obama, who yet again — for the 15th time in his administration following a mass shooting — had to face his country and try to bind its wounds, is angry, and rightly so. He’s also been impotent in converting that rage into action, stymied by Congress.

The nation has become numb to such tragedies, he said Thursday night, speaking of the unspeakable routineness of mass shootings.

“And what’s become routine, of course, is the response of those who oppose any kind of common-sense gun legislation,” he said, taking a clear shot at the pro-gun lobby. “Right now, I can imagine the press releases being cranked out: ‘We need more guns,’ they’ll argue. Fewer gun-safety laws. Does anybody really believe that?” Incomprehensibly, many do. After Newtown, Obama put forth a proposal to overhaul America’s gun laws, including universal background checks and further “concrete steps” aimed at preventing more mass shootings.

“This is how we will be judged,” he declared in January 2013. Mere months later, both Democratic and Republican lawmakers rejected the meat of the president’s gun control agenda.

Politics and interest groups — read NRA — are the problem, Obama repeated Thursday.

“This will not change until the politics changes and the behaviour of elected officials changes. So the main thing I’m going to do is I’m going to talk about this on a regular basis. And I will politicize it, because our inaction is a political decision that we are making.

“The reason that Congress does not support even the modest gun safety laws that we proposed after Sandy Hook is not because the majority of the American people don’t support it. Normally politicians are responsive to the views of the electorate. The majority of the American people think it’s the right thing to do — background checks, other common sense steps that would maybe save some lives. Couldn’t even get a full vote. And why is that?

“It’s because of politics. It’s because interest groups fund campaigns, feed people fear. And in fairness it’s not just in the Republican Party, although the Republican Party is uniformly opposed to all gun safety laws.

“And, unless we change that political dynamic we’re not going to be able to make a big dent in this problem.” Oikos University, Oakland, Calif., April 2, 2012: 7 dead, 3 wounded. Sheriff John Hanlin, the lawman who became the public face of Roseburg’s pain in the aftermath of the Umpqua calamity, famously refuses to utter the shooter’s name. “I will not give him the credit he probably sought with this horrific and cowardly act.”

But Hanlin is part of the problem, among the intransigent gun proponents.

Mother Jones published a letter from Hanlin in January 2013, in which he described gun control as an “indisputable insult to the American people.” He also backed a petition sent to the White House following Sandy Hook, urging the president to “stand with law-abiding gun owners in this time of tragedy,” adding: “Please don’t pander to the politics, Mr. President. A feeding frenzy of new gun-legislation is not the answer.”

More insanity from Hanlin: A month after the Newtown shooting, he posted, presumably with approval, a video to his personal Facebook page called “The Sandy Hook Shooting after Sandy Hook — Fully Exposed.” The video made several conspiracy claims, including the insistence there had been more than one shooter that day, and that the grieving parents who appeared on news reports were acting.

You can’t make this stuff up. Sandy Hook Elementary School, Newtown, Conn., Dec. 14, 2012: 28 dead, 2 wounded. And the latest, but sadly not the last: Umpqua College, Roseburg, Ore., Thursday: Nine murdered, at least seven wounded, one shooter killed in a gunfight with police. Rosie DiManno usually appears Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.