Heroes step in where politicians fear to tread
America’s failure to impose a modicum of gun control amid the storm of mass shootings has led citizens to make wrenching, sacrificial choices when killers open fire.
Ryan Keith Cox made that judgment Friday in Virginia. As a gunman opened fire inside a municipal building in Virginia Beach, Cox, an account clerk, led co-workers into a break room and told them to barri- cade the door. Then he headed back toward the shooting. “I’ve got to see if anybody else needs help,” he said. Cox would be killed with 11 others before police arrived.
Kendrick Castillo, days from graduating from high school, made the same mortal choice last month in suburban Denver. Castillo had already told his father that in the event of a school shooting, he would be compelled to act: “You raised me to be a good person.” When a shooter entered a classroom at STEM School Highlands Ranch, Castillo lunged at the gunman and was killed, but not before fellow students had a chance to seek cover.
Before that, the fateful choice was Riley Howell’s. The college student tackled a gunman in a lecture hall at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte on April 30, knocking the shooter down and saving lives. Howell likewise paid for his heroism with his life.
These are choices no ordinary person should have to make, yet they do: Lori Gilbert Kaye stepped between a gunman and her rabbi to take a fatal round during a synagogue shooting outside San Diego on April 27; and Sheriff’s Sgt. Ron Helus rushed into a night club in Thousand Oaks, California, last November as a gunman was slaughtering patrons. Helus was killed.
Each should be celebrated as a hero, but with knowledge that their selflessness stands in stark contrast to the cowardly failure by lawmakers to control gun violence.
Such action is certainly possible. New Zealand banned most semi-automatic weapons less than a month after a white nationalist killed 50 people in Christchurch on March 15.
Nor is America’s Second Amendment an insurmountable obstacle to commonsense gun measures. The late Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in 2008 that the amendment is “not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever for whatever purpose.”
Would new restrictions prevent every mass shooting? Of course not. Would they stop some and make some others less lethal? Yes.
In Washington, the House of Representatives has passed measures that would expand the period for conducting firearm background checks, and extend those checks to gun show and internet sales. But Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., does nothing to bring them to a vote in the Senate.
Last January, Virginia lawmakers rejected a raft of gun bills, including a ban on large-capacity magazines like those used by the Virginia Beach gunman. When a killer is forced to reload sooner, the heroes among us have a chance — just maybe — to overwhelm the gunman without losing their lives.
On Tuesday, Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam called for a special session of the General Assembly to reconsider the measures. “Ordinary Virginians showed extraordinary courage,” Northam said about Virginia Beach.
It’s long past time that lawmakers, federal and state alike, did the same.