If Broward sheriff should go, so should lax gun control

Yes, Florida’s outgoing or incoming governor should remove Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel from office.

Yes, Florida’s incoming governor, the Legislature, Congress and President Trump should do more to regulate firearms and ammunition.

These are not mutually exclusive positions. Both would improve public safety. The politics of firearms, however, has divided public opinion.

After mass shootings like the one at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, opponents of tougher firearms laws — who tend to be Republicans — focus on the killer. Supporters of tougher regulation — who tend to be Democrats — focus on the weapon. But with the Parkland shooting, each side has a point.

We know from the Sun Sentinel’s exemplary reporting that the system should have flagged Nikolas Cruz long before he shot up Stoneman Douglas. The feds, the state and the school district missed their chances.

Because of those failures, Cruz was able to buy the military-style rifle with which he turned the school into a killing ground. Under Florida’s new law, which Gov.-elect Ron DeSantis opposed, Cruz would have been too young to buy a firearm.

DeSantis is a Republican. Israel is a Democrat. To some Democrats, removing Israel amounts to ignoring the role of the weapon. Actually, removing Israel means holding Israel accountable.

Hearing the sheriff defend his recent performance is like hearing Trump rate his presidency. Whatever the bad results, whatever the damning evidence, he’s right. Yet Israel’s failure to hold himself accountable after one mass shooting likely led to more casualties at another.

The record shows that the Sheriff ’s Office mishandled the January 2017 attack at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport. The record also shows that Israel didn’t learn from the department’s mistakes.

Example: How could the Sheriff ’s Office have told deputies that they “may” — as opposed to “shall” — confront active shooters? Would the Army and the Marines give troops that option in confronting the enemy?

The record also shows an institutional failure by the Sheriff ’s Office last Feb. 14, from the area captain down to the responding deputies. Scot Peterson may be the face of that failure, but the breakdown occurred at every level.

Given that record and his unwillingness to fault himself, keeping Israel in office to avoid giving what the National Rifle Association might claim as a victory would insult the families of those whom Cruz killed and wounded. It would leave Broward residents more vulnerable.

Yet accountability also rests with the system that allowed Cruz to buy his weapon. It rests with those who deny the dangers of America’s firearms culture.

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported last month that nearly 40,000 people in the United States died from firearms deaths in 2017. That was the highest since 1968, when the CDC began keeping records.

NRA leaders and their congressional acolytes regularly note that 60 percent of these deaths are suicides. So what? Families of suicide victims grieve no less than families of Stoneman Douglas victims.

Though Florida passed its post-Stoneman Douglas law, which the NRA has challenged, nothing happened in Congress. In large part because of NRA resistance, nothing happened after the slaughter of 20 first-graders and six teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary.

Cracks have appeared in the NRA’s façade. Florida defied the group to pass that law. Membership dues dropped by

$35 million between 2016 and 2017. The NRA ran operating deficits those years and recently discontinued free coffee at its headquarters.

Yet donations tripled after the Parkland shooting. At this year’s convention, “gundamenaltist” members protested that the NRA had gone soft.

Commissioners investigating the Stoneman Douglas Massacre correctly took no position on Israel’s future. Rick Scott or Ron DeSantis, though, has ample grounds to remove the sheriff.

But Stoneman Douglas needed a response from law enforcement only because Cruz was able to buy his weapon. That AR-15 turned Cruz from a troubled teenager into a troubled mass murderer.

Even the best firearms regulation system will fail. The system should have prevented the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007 and the Texas church shooting last year. Even the best security system will fail.