Our nation deserves better gun laws
Once again our country mourns loss of life at the hands of an unbalanced gunman armed and outfitted as if for war. Once again, we see little hope for action.
Meanwhile, we grieve the deaths of 26 churchgoers in a tiny Texas community, and look with scorn upon the shooter, who also injured at least 20 others.
Police say a domestic situation motivated the killer, Devin Patrick Kelley, 26.
Not animus toward another race. Not hostility toward religion. Kelley sent threatening messages to his mother-in-law, who attended the church, but wasn’t even there during Kelley’s rampage.
Kelley, court-martialed and discharged from the Air Force on charges of assaulting his wife and child, was able to assemble his arsenal due to a tragic Air Force error.
The result? Discord among family members, access to weapons designed for combat, highcapacity ammunition magazines, all the cartridges he could carry and an unhinged mind was all it took to lay waste to the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs. The pattern is too familiar. Troubled teenagers slaughter peers at a high school in Columbine.
A failing graduate student stockpiles weapons and ammo and slaughters movie-goers in Aurora.
A homebody with a fixation on elementary school children slaughters first-graders and others in Newtown, Conn.
A more methodical killer adds a new twist, makes already rapid-fire weapons fully automatic and kills nearly 60 at a concert in Las Vegas.
The mind reels that so many in our country believe the framers of our rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness would have condoned access not just to hunting rifles and small arms meant for self-protection, but also to the kind of firepower these dark minds find so readily available.
Yet the status quo keeps marching us down this bloodstained path.
Little more than a month has passed since the Vegas tragedy.
Lawmakers have discussed banning the kind of “bump stocks” the Vegas killer employed, but have done little else.
In Colorado, we were pleased to support the successful ban in 2013 of ammunition magazines that held more than 15 rounds. We’re mystified by the hostility that still confronts those calling for even that reasonable starting point.
Those traditionally opposed to most any gun restrictions offer thoughts and prayers backed with no doubt genuine feelings of remorse and sympathy.
Those who believe more rules could stop the bewildering likes of a James Holmes or Devin Kelley understandably rush to calls for action.
We shudder before the painful wisdom of Columbine survivor Anne Marie Hochhalter — condemned to life in a wheelchair — who summed up the thoughts-and-prayers approach with a Facebook post, saying, “These mass shootings are going to keep happening and no one cares enough to do anything about it. … Do something other than saying this phrase.”
We also take heart in the courage exhibited by church neighbors who wounded Kelley in a shootout and chased him down to his death.
As we wrote of security guard Jeanne Assam, who took out a shooter inside the New Life church in Colorado Springs in 2007, such bravery and ability likely saved lives.
Urging more places of worship to provide armed protection might sound terribly out of place.
The fact that doing so makes profound sense stands as quite a sad statement indeed about our unconscionable national inaction, and our bewildering love affair with firepower.
So many lives — lost, living and yet unborn — deserve so much better.
The mind reels that so many in our country believe the framers of our rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness would have condoned access not just to hunting rifles and small arms meant for self-protection, but also to the kind of firepower these dark minds find so readily available.