Virtue signaling won’t stop a mass shooter.
Nor will scoring political points.
If we earnestly want to focus on preventing these horrific attacks, let’s stop wasting everybody’s time advocating new laws that we already know, had they been in effect, would not have stopped the Uvalde, Texas, school shooting.
Or the recent massacre in Buffalo.
Or virtually any other murder spree.
“On the specifics,” Face the Nation host Margaret Brennan asked Sen. Chris Murphy (D‑Conn.), “how would your federal background check have stopped either of these two shooters in Buffalo and in Texas? Neither of them had criminal records.”
“I just don’t get into the trap of having to write a law for the last mass shooting that captured the nation’s attention,” the senator responded, arguing that “on the same day of the shooting in Uvalde, there were 100 plus other people in this country who died.”
Sen. Murphy was anything but frank, certainly, but it was an admission that his proposal is clearly not geared toward stopping massacres by gunmen.
Americans should ignore the political circus, realizing that the politicians are working on other agendas while these killers have serious and often completely untreated mental health issues. Let’s concentrate public policy — and everyday neighborliness — there.
Lastly, while some dismiss the value of “thoughts and prayers,” I do not. There is a social, emotional, spiritual element that I think we totally discard when all we can talk about is what a bunch of corrupt folks in Washington “must do” to solve our problems.
On the other hand, a return to a culture of mourning, thoughts and prayers might at least sober up those drunk on power.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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8 replies on “Not Saving Lives”
While not a cure-all, one measure we should support is raising the age at which a person can buy a gun to 21. It seems that the perpetrator is usually, if not always, an adolescent male. The drinking age was raised to 21 some time ago. A similar measure for guns won’t stop all mass shooters but it does put some limits on younger people and might help restrain their violent impulses. The world looks a lot different at 21.
How frequent were such shootings fifty years ago?
In any case, placing one means out of the hands of potential perpetrators tends to result in substitution of other means. We’ve already seem willful mass woundings and killings effected with automobiles. Should driver licenses be denied to people younger than 21 years old?
You’re right, but those other means (like knives) can make it easier for others to contain the damage and result in lower casualties. As for the car that drove through the parade, that is not the first time it’s happened. If a parade was taking place on the street, why weren’t the roads blocked, to prevent accidents as well as murder by car? Cars have deliberately driven off the road and onto sidewalks to cause mass death. No one wants to talk about that because of who the perpetrators are.
I don’t want to explain how to kill many children at a school with a car or truck, but it would easily be done, and in a great many cases barricades would not be a practicable preventive.
Remember that the Sandy Hook shooter? He was 20. He killed his mother and stole her guns.
That was supposed to reply to Pat
And at the time he murdered his mother, he had a clear history of mental illness and inability to cope. His mother wanted him committed for treatment but he was over 18 and the laws for involuntary commitment put barriers in her way. He got to her first.
Arming teachers and people at other soft targets may have more effect than all the gun control laws.