America, under the gun
Even in an America inured to the insanity of our national firearm free-for-all, this is a new level of national madness. In 2012, Devin Kelley battered his then-wife. And cracked the skull of his infant stepson. Convicted in military court of the monstrous assault, he was sentenced to 12 months confinement and booted from the Air Force in a bad-conduct discharge.
Federal laws are supposed to prohibit possession of a gun by anyone “convicted in any court of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence.”
Yet because of an apparently simple mistake — the Air Force failed to enter that assault conviction into the NCIS, the national database that is the basis for federal background checks — Kelley then legally bought gun after gun after gun.
And so, by dint of a clerical error, a violent man armed himself to the teeth, including with the military-grade Ruger AR-556 with which he turned a small Texas church into a slaughterhouse.
Such is the distance between life and mass death in the gun-saturated U.S.A.
Never mind, President Trump assures the nation, the mass murder of Sutherland Springs is not “a guns situation”; we ought to focus solely on the shooter’s mental health status.
The assertion lays bare the gun lobby’s routine and dastardly sleight of hand, whereby Americans are told to consider every mass shooting the result either of ready access to weapons or of a psychological problem, never the twain shall meet.
The truth, obvious to anyone who understands human nature, is that forces commingle. When minds that might move toward murder — whether diagnosed by a clinician or not — can put hands on high-powered weaponry, they are that much likelier to convert horror-fantasy into reality.
Which is why, in addition to closing all unconscionable loopholes that let Kelley arm himself, Congress must ban outright the guns that men like him use as cold instruments of mass murder.
A saner America imposed such a ban, from 1994-2004. Since its lapse, mass murderers have increasingly gravitated toward AR-15-style rifles.
They were the weapon of choice in Aurora, Colo. (12 killed in 2012); Sandy Hook (27 killed in 2012); Oregon (nine killed in 2015); San Bernardino (14 killed in 2015); Orlando (49 killed in 2016), and Las Vegas (58 killed this year).
It is a poison in the culture, producing uniquely American carnage: A fetishized lust for the killing power of weapons with no practical purpose in hunting or home defense — but marketed with swagger as capable of turning ordinary men into action heroes, or villains.
Assault rifles are not just sold by catering to bloodlust; they are capable of killing with a chilling efficiency.
Bullets leave their muzzles at three times the speed of handgun bullets. Each wound destroys more bone, rips apart more flesh. And whereas handguns can’t so easily be fired multiple times in quick succession, the trigger on an assault rifle can be squeezed repeatedly with relatively little effort.
No one in his or her right mind would pretend that banning one type of weapon will keep all Americans safe. Had Kelley not had access to the gun he lovingly called a “bad bitch,” he may well have murdered as many people as possible with the Glock 9-mm or Ruger .22 found in his car.
But we can prevent some mass murder. We can save some people from being brutally killed and grievously injured, and rescue their loved ones from unspeakable agony.
We have no moral choice but to try.