Horror show at YouTube
Awoman shot and wounded three people, before killing herself, on Tuesday at the San Bruno campus of YouTube. The violent and chaotic incident, which sent YouTube workers racing for the exits or barricading themselves into rooms, is the latest example of how Washington’s failure to embrace sensible gun control measures has put every single person who lives and works in this country at risk.
Law enforcement officers in San Bruno and the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office are still investigating the shooter, 39-yearold Nasim Najafi Aghdam of Menifee (Riverside County). According to a Chronicle review of Aghdam’s social media accounts, she was an animalrights activist and prolific YouTube poster who’d complained that the company was censoring her content.
We’ll learn much more about Aghdam’s background in the days to come. But here’s one serious fact that we already know about this shooter, and every mass shooter in the past: It was far too easy for them to get the weapons they had.
Compared with other states, California has relatively strict gun control laws. Those laws may have saved lives on Tuesday. Aghdam, who wore a shooting mask and body armor during the attack, used a handgun rather than the AR-15-style rifles that have cost so many lives during recent mass shootings at a Florida nightclub, a Las Vegas concert, a Texas church and the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla.
Still, the fact that Aghdam wasn’t able to kill more people isn’t one that should be celebrated.
In Washington, “thoughts and prayers” for the traumatized survivors of mass shootings have yet to lead to meaningful reform. Congress remains stuck even on modest measures that boast near-universal support. According to a February Quinnipiac University poll, 83 percent of U.S. voters support a mandatory waiting period for firearm purchases and 67 percent support an assault weapons ban.
If Congress won’t take action, even a restrictive state like California can’t prevent guns from slipping through the cracks.