A minute of slaughter
Ohio and Pa. should adopt gun safety laws
Within a minute of an alert to police, a 24- year- old man armed with a high- capacity rifle squeezed off 41 shots, killed nine people and injured 27 more before Dayton, Ohio, police cut him down.
Let’s pause for a like amount of time to consider:
Last year, Ohio’s General Assembly curtly rebuffed proposed “red flag” legislation from former Gov. John Kasich. Oh, if the clock could be turned back.
In consideration of the violence that occurred over the weekend in Dayton, not so far away in time and space from Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life slaughter, the Ohio Legislature should join Gov. Mike DeWine and adopt laws that will move Ohio in the direction of safety from random and mass gun violence. And Pennsylvania should do the same.
It’s up to Congress to enact national legislation limiting the availability of the kinds of weapons that are being used in the string of outbreaks of mass shootings — weapons that by any standard can be deemed weapons of mass destruction. Our state legislatures owe it to the dead and injured to forestall all session breaks until plans can be put in place to prevent this senseless and expansive violence. And if they are unwilling, our governors should compel special sessions.
Had the Ohio General Assembly acted on Mr. Kasich’s proposed “red flag” law last year, several people who knew the Dayton killer, Connor Betts, could have reported him to law enforcement. It is conceivable that he would have been refused the ability to buy the high- capacity rifle that he used to gun down innocent people in Dayton’s Oregon District.
Pennsylvania has taken baby steps toward more reasonable gun control with a new law that requires individuals under a protection from-abuse order, and anyone convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence, to relinquish firearms and ammunition. Giant leaps are needed.
High- capacity magazines and weapons should be at the top of a hit list.
Mr. DeWine, like many Americans, has a checkered and somewhat contradictory record on gun control. The same is true of the president. But both politicians, like most Americans, know that as a society, we have reached an intolerable point. We have to rethink. The status quo cannot stand.