Now’s the time for more than thoughts and prayers
Let’s not mince words. Our nation is under attack. If terrorists were shooting up classrooms where our children huddle in fear, the U.S. military would have already launched airstrikes overseas in retaliation.
But this attack is coming from within. At an appalling and quickening pace, growing numbers of Americans are being massacred at churches, concerts, nightclubs, shopping malls and classrooms, as the nation does virtually nothing to stop the slaughter.
Three of the 10 deadliest mass shootings in modern American history have occurred in the past five months, most recently Wednesday’s carnage at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., where 17 students and teachers were gunned down and 15 wounded by a disturbed expelled student wielding an AR-15 assault-style rifle.
Tragically, images of traumatized students, rushing single file out of classrooms with their hands in the air under the protective muzzles of police rifles, have become all too familiar.
So, too, have the rote responses of leaders complaining vaguely about “absolutely pure evil” running amok (Florida Gov. Rick Scott) or focusing on “mental health” (President Trump), with nary a mention of the weapons of war used to carry out these massacres.
This should not be an either-or debate between mental health and guns. The challenge, as always, is to separate the most disturbed individuals from the deadliest weapons.
Identifying the tiny fraction of deranged people who will become mass killers is fiendishly difficult.
Sometimes, as in Florida, they send up warning flares. The alleged Parkland shooter, 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz, displayed clear signs of emotional distress. He flaunted an obsession with guns on Instagram and kept a rifle in the home of a family who took him in after Cruz’s parents died. Last September, a YouTube post under Cruz’s name declared, “I’m going to be a professional school shooter.”
In others cases, however, there are few or no outward signs of the homicidal fury to come. Stephen Paddock killed 58 people at a Las Vegas concert last October — the worst mass shooting in U.S. modern history — and authorities still have almost no clue why.
Truth is, disturbed people bent on savagery will, like terrible and erratic thunderstorms, periodically unleash their rage on American society. Police and mental health professionals, as hard as they try, will not stop them all.
But one definitive way to reduce — not end — the carnage is to dial down the killing power of these broken individuals by making it far more difficult for them to obtain their killing tools of choice: assault-style rifles equipped with high-capacity magazines.
These weapons, with their high muzzle velocity and low recoil, cause catastrophic damage to the human body. Moreover, 70% of Republicans and 91% of Democrats favor banning these firearms.
Other commonsense steps, with high public approval but resisted by the gun lobby, include toughening background checks and outlawing “bump stock” devices, used by Paddock in Las Vegas, that effectively turn semiautomatic rifles into machine guns.
The Second Amendment guarantees a constitutional right to bear arms, but it does not preclude reasonable regulation of the most destructive weapons, according to the Supreme Court's Heller decision, written by the late conservative Justice Antonin Scalia.
Does it make any sense that, in Florida and other states, you can’t buy a drink until you are 21 but can purchase a firearm when you are 18 and your brain is still developing?
“We’re children,” surviving high school student David Hogg, 17, told CNN. “You guys are the adults. You need to take some action and play a role. Work together. Come over your politics and get something done.”
Now is the time for more than thoughts and prayers. It’s time for serious efforts to stop the madness.