Political power games allow this to continue

Manhattan: Last weekend’s shooting of 13 innocent victims in Buffalo demands reflection and reaction, and cries out for mourning and a search for meaning. Although the racist motive seems clear, the fact that a crazed gunman was on a killing spree in a neighborhood supermarket on an otherwise lazy Saturday afternoon, and that he live-streamed his venomous crime, makes the heartlessness and culpability of his actions unfathomably sickening, and not his alone. As the well-respected civil rights attorney Ben Crump sees it: “Politicians who are trying to use fear to stimulate their base ... to help get cable news ratings ... [are] accomplices to this mass murder ... even though they did not pull the trigger, they loaded the gun.”

New York has some of the toughest gun laws in the nation, including the controversial “red flag” law to prevent persons considered dangerous to themselves and to others as unfit to legally have guns. But guns are purchased outside of this state and brought here. Without stricter national gun laws and the elimination of various loopholes in existing laws, it will be impossible to control guns; they will still get into the wrong hands. Although this latest killing spree was done with a legally purchased rifle — an AR-15, known to be used by soldiers like those fighting in Ukraine — the rise in illegal “ghost” guns also presents a huge threat to innocent bystanders.

As a legislator, you didn’t instigate the gunman with coded rhetoric or encourage the use of social media as a provocative means of gaining followers. But without enacting laws, guns will be loaded by accomplices who did nothing!