‘ This has been going on too long’
President Trump’s response to the mass shooting at a Santa Fe, Texas, high school was right, only as far as his understatement went: “This has been going on too long in our country.” Ever so predictably and hollowly, he offered condolences to the victims and “our support to everyone affected by this absolutely horrific attack.”
What Trump did not propose was any serious tightening of this nation’s absurdly, dangerously lax gun- control laws.
And so it goes, again and again and again.
Our hearts go out to the 10 people who lost their lives at the high school 30 miles southeast of Houston, and the friends, families, classmates and community members who are reeling from yet another mass shooting in the United States. But sympathy is not enough.
How much more carnage must this nation accept before acknowledging that it has a gun problem? Each massacre leads to another round of “thoughts and prayers” from politicians who are in a position to take meaningful action but are too timid to do anything about it.
There is always an excuse for inaction. If the weapon was obtained illegally, the gun- rights politicians suggest the answer is to enforce existing laws, not create new ones. If the shooter had a history of mental illness, the answer is to focus on that underlying condition, and disregard the reality that he could not have inflicted mass casualties without a lethal weapon. If the shooter has no criminal history, as appears to be the case with this 17year- old suspect, the answer is to fortify the school’s defenses through architectural design and deployment of armed guards.
There is a maddening admission of futility about each of those rationales.
There is also an element of fear behind the inaction. In a brief moment of lucidity after the slaughter of 17 students at Parkland, Fla., in February, Trump told a group of U. S. senators at the White House, “you’re afraid of the NRA.”
Within days, Trump met with representatives of the National Rifle Association and changed his tune. Earlier this month, in an address to the NRA’s national convention, Trump assured the audience that their Second Amendment rights “will never, ever be under siege as long as I am your president.”
Nothing seems to change, even as the unthinkable keeps getting redefined. On Dec. 14, 2012, 20 young children and six adult staff members were shot and killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. Congress could not bring itself to reinstate a ban on assault- style weapons that have been a common element in most of these massacres ( though not in Santa Fe) or close loopholes in background checks or prohibit suspected terrorists on the no- fly list from obtaining guns.
The two worst shootings in modern U. S. history ( Las Vegas, 58 dead) and Orlando ( 49 dead) have occurred in the past two years. At least 140 children, educators and others have been killed at school sites since the 1999 massacre that claimed 15 lives at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., according to a Washington Post survey.
Sen. Ted Cruz, R- Texas, a staunch gun- rights advocate, said in Santa Fe that “everything humanly possible” must be done to prevent another school massacre. Significant action on gun control is humanly possible. What is lacking is the political will to summon more than thoughts and prayers.