School shooting and social pathology

“I didn’t look. I just ran.” So spoke a 14-year-old student at Santa Fe High School after the latest school shooting rocked her campus on Friday.

The tragedy is that at least 10 people are dead and 10 others wounded, including a school officer. The tragedy is also something much larger: In this era of mass killings, school shootings have become so commonplace that they no longer surprise.

In this case, the alleged shooter and a possible accomplice are now in custody, so there may be that small sliver of solace from learning something about what led to this attack.

Some will likely want to call this domestic terrorism. To us, it reads as something deeper still. When our kids are on the run as well as marching for their lives, it should be clear that there is a pathology coursing through the veins of our society. And it should be equally clear that we need to fight against that pathology with tools that have a reasonable chance at being effective.

Gov. Greg Abbott has an opportunity to crack apart the biggest obstacle to finding the cures we need: a reluctance to even discuss possible solutions.

In the wake of this shooting, Abbott is now planning to hold roundtable discussions with “stakeholders to begin to work immediately on swift solutions.” He specifically said he’d look at new laws. His aim is to find reforms that can “prevent tragedies like these” from occurring.

He has previously supported speeding up background checks as well as creating additional screens to prevent dangerous people from acquiring firearms.