As the toll from non-ideological terrorism grows, America needs to confront gun culture
Still reeling from the Halloween rampage on a New York City bike path, America was jolted Sunday by yet another horrific mass killing — this time at a church in sleepy Sutherland Springs, Texas.
The first claimed eight lives, the second 26. The first was committed by a self-proclaimed follower of ISIS, the second by a man with a family grudge and a cache of weapons.
The New York killings are part of an international trend in terrorism, using trucks to mow down victims. But Sutherland Springs — that was quintessentially American.
And so very, very sad. Our hearts go out to the families touched by an assault on what should be a place of peace and refuge.
While a heroic, armed civilian stemmed the rampage Sunday, America’s gun culture spawned it. The score at the end was one murderer dead and 26 innocent people slaughtered, 20 more injured and countless others whose lives will never be the same.
No one action or law can reverse this trend, just as no one action turned smoking from a social practice to anathema, or drunk driving from a wink-and-nod to a serious crime. Yes, legislation is needed, as it was in those cases. But our culture has to shift to welcome that legislation. And we are starting way late.
It’s just over a month since a gunman holed up in a Las Vegas hotel mowed down 58 revelers at a concert below and injured 500
— the largest single-incident mass killing since 9/11. We still don’t know why.
When people are angry in America, have guns on hand and are themselves ready to die, these tragedies sometimes happen. It’s time to confront that fact, despite the amount of money the NRA and other groups invest in lawmakers’ votes and in propagating the gun culture.
In Texas, the armed Samaritan cut short the killing spree without injuring anybody else. One person with a gun in a crowd that’s suddenly under siege can indeed stop the carnage if he or she is a professional peace officer or an experienced, level-headed hunter. But the Texas attorney general jumped on this heroism to call for more people to carry guns all the time.
Without careful vetting and training of people who carry guns — as they do in Switzerland, which really does have a well-regulated militia — this would only compound the mayhem. Imagine a dozen or more gunmen nervously trying to get a shot during the panic.
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Yes, we need to be vigilant of ideological terrorists. We don’t see the Trump administration’s rhetoric or tactics as helpful, but Homeland Security has thwarted scores of plots here since 2001.
What does not make sense is continuing to ignore the home grown mass killers from Sandy Hook to Columbine, from Charleston to Sutherland Springs. We need to figure out how to turn this tide, not how to take shooters down after they’ve started spraying bullets at the innocent.