What if? Questions haunt after gun violence
It was a normal transaction. A man went to a licensed gun store north of Atlanta, filled out paperwork, got an instant background check, paid the bill and walked out with a gun. No waiting period; no required safety or training class. And just hours later, according to authorities, that 21-year-old man used that 9mm handgun to kill eight people in a rampage that targeted Asian spas. The obvious question that emerges is “What if?” What if there had been a waiting period? What if the man’s family had been able to raise a red flag about him that would have prevented him from getting a gun?
It is impossible to know for sure whether the tragedy that unfolded March 16 would have been averted. Perhaps the killer would have figured out some other way to get a gun. But it is also possible that the families of those eight people killed might not now be mourning irreplaceable loss had there been reasonable restrictions on gun purchases to guard against weapons falling into the wrong hands or being used on impulse, as both seem to have been the case here.
The Atlanta killings were followed days later by a mass shooting at a Boulder, Colo., supermarket in which 10 people were slain. That suspect, also 21 years old, had been convicted of assaulting a high school classmate but was still able, less than a week before his rampage at the King Soopers grocery store, to buy a Ruger AR-556, a semiautomatic weapon with a capacity of up to 30 rounds. The backto-back mass shootings spotlighted once again in horrific fashion the ridiculous ease with which guns, including those designed for war, are able to be acquired in this country.
None of that — or the 18 lives lost in a span of days — makes a bit of difference to opponents of gun-safety laws who refuse to even consider the possibility that there might be steps that could be taken to try to protect public safety. “Ridiculous theater,” Sen. Ted Cruz, R-texas, said of last week’s discussion by the Senate Judiciary Committee on how to combat gun violence. A common refrain from opponents of gun-safety laws is how one particular law wouldn’t stop one particular shooting, or wouldn’t stop every shooting.
Well, of course no one law will stop every shooting. And of course other factors, such as mental health, come into play. But laws can — and do — make a difference in stopping some shootings. Waiting periods for gun purchases result in decreased suicide and homicide rates. Countries that have had the good sense to ban assault weapons don’t have the mass shootings that are epidemic to the United States. Robust background checks do stop guns from falling into the hands of people who shouldn’t have them. And lives have been saved when a family member has had the means to prevent a suicidal loved one from getting a gun. Stopping some shootings, saving some lives. Wouldn’t that be a good thing?