San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
SMOLENS • Common refrain on social media: ‘There are no words’
We all ask, why is this happening? Why isn’t something being done about it?
The first question may generate a million theories, though the availability of guns, particularly assaultstyle weapons, is a thread that runs through them.
The latter may be more manageable to address. After the Uvalde killings, veteran political writer Ronald Brownstein with The Atlantic looked to the past for an explanation.
“When the Senate voted on universal background checks after Sandy Hook, as I calculated at the time, the Senators voting for the bill represented 194 million people, while opponents represented only 118 million,” he wrote on Twitter. “Pretty decisive. But the filibuster allowed the 118 to prevail.”
It has been nearly 10 years since 20 children and six staff members were shot to death at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. No major federal gun control legislation has passed since, despite subsequent mass shootings at schools, churches, concerts and just about any place people congregate.
Public opinion polls tend to show strong support for gun safety laws, but others suggest it’s more nuanced, which may explain why minority Republicans in Congress seek to block any substantial change in the law — and the process allows them to do so.
Regardless of what the polls say, is it too much to ask to put them aside at least to enact common sense — and popular — laws like universal background checks?
Except for a relatively short period of time, efforts to outlaw Ar-15-type weapons — one of which apparently was used in Uvalde — beyond military and law enforcement use have been blocked.
Clearly, gun control isn’t solely the answer. California has some of the toughest gun restrictions in the nation and one of the lowest gun death rates among states, yet still has its share of mass shootings. It’s difficult if not impossible for California to keep weapons from states with weaker gun laws from coming here.
But there’s no question some greater controls are part of the equation. It will take a multilevel effort of gun safety regulations and mental health screenings, along with a societal sea change.
How do you overcome the mindset — whatever it is — that has allowed such massacres to become so common?
Some believe the mass shootings somehow reflect the American character.
That’s really not the case. It’s about the character of some Americans, and unless the country can figure out how to deal with that, innocent lives will continue to be lost.
Real progress likely only will happen if people who are politically secure enough and in good standing with the National Rifle Association can convince members there’s a way to address pervasive gun violence without threatening their right to own guns. That probably would require folks on the left to put aside some of their goals on banning guns.
Yes, that seems like a faraway dream.
Defenders of gun ownership say this is no time for politics. Sure it is. Few things are more political than the debate over gun safety and gun rights. Insisting that shouldn’t take place after another shooting massacre is, as others have pointed out, merely a political maneuver to avoid discussing it.
Conversations over school security, police responses, what makes mass murderers tick and gun control are absolutely appropriate at this time. But that shouldn’t take away from reflecting on the human tragedy before the moment fades into another unpleasant distant memory like so many other mass shootings have.
As the details of what happened in Uvlade on Tuesday emerged, a common refrain on social media was “There are no words.” While this was an unspeakable crime, words seem to be all we have right now.
It was hard to breathe at times listening to the words of heartbroken parents who had just lost their children. But I’m going to give the last word to a different parent, of sorts — a Robb Elementary School teacher who survived along with her classroom full of students.
“What do you want me to say?” she asked an NBC reporter who knocked on her door. “That I can’t eat?
That all I hear are their voices screaming? And I can’t help them?”
She eventually agreed to talk further under the condition she wouldn’t be identified, in part because, she said, district administrators asked staff members not to speak with reporters — but also because she was terrified.
Upon hearing the gunfire down the hall, the teacher said she shouted for her students to get under their desks and sprinted to lock her classroom door. The children did exactly as they were told, she said.
“They’ve been practicing for this day for years,” she said.
Eventually, police helped them all get out safely.
Some parents texted the teacher: “Thank you for keeping my baby safe.”
“But it’s not just their baby,” the teacher said, sobbing on her front porch. “That’s my baby, too. They are not my students. They are my children.”
Tweet of the Week
Goes to Sports Illustrated (@Sinow) quoting Damion Lee of the Golden State Warriors.
“It’s easier to get a gun than baby formula right now.”
michael.smolens@ sduniontribune.com