Our View: With 14 dead, isn’t it time we did something?
How much longer will we allow ourselves to be terrorized? That’s the queston we should be asking in the wake of Wednesday’s shooting in San Bernardino that killed 14 ... and the shooting in Colorado Springs that killed three ... and the three shootings that killed five and wounded nine in Minneapolis, Houston and Columbus three days before Thanksgiving.
Mass shootings are a way of life in America, with more than 350 in the nation this year. We have them on college campuses, in churches, in movie theaters, malls, military bases and in our homes. Nowhere is safe from someone determined to kill. But those who are determined and possess rapid-fire weapons can kill a lot more than those without.
By now, everyone knows the drill. As we try to come to grips with this latest episode, liberals will decry easy access to guns by the deranged, dangerous and mentally ill. Conservatives will decry any gun-use reform as a potential encroachment on their rights to sell guns to anyone – including, apparently, to those on federal watch lists.
Thursday, the day after the San Bernardino shootings, Sen. Dianne Feinstein tried to close that very specific loophole allowing those on federal watch lists to legally buy guns. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, was more worried that a few people on such lists might not belong there. He led the Republican effort to vote down her legislation.
As Congressional Republicans voted in lockstep to protect the profits of gun manufacturers, the GOP’s presidential candidates each tweeted condolences and promises of prayers for the victims. Nice sentiments, but it wasn’t nearly enough for the The New York Daily News, which shouted in its headline: “God isn’t fixing this.”
Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., couldn’t contain his anger: “Your thoughts should be about steps to take to stop this carnage,” he tweeted. “Your ‘prayers’ should be for forgiveness if you do nothing – again.”
But what should we do? Start with more stringent background checks. Add even more criteria for those who want to own weapons capable of rapidly killing lots of people. Create strong penalties for those who don’t adequately protect those weapons from criminals. Put those who legally buy handguns then re-sell them to criminals not allowed to own them in jail. Make guns safer by making them incapable of being fired by anyone but the owner. And put people who clearly shouldn’t have guns on a “no-buy” list similar to our nation’s “no-fly” lists. None of that would get in the way of people wanting to buy guns for hunting or sport.
No official reason has been given for these shootings, but even President Obama noted it could be an act of terrorism. If that’s the case, the more we understand about those who perpetrated it and their motivations the better prepared we will be to take precautions.
It’s unlikely that Syed Rizwan Farook, a San Bernardino County environmental inspector for five years, and his Pakistani wife Tashfeen Malik, were on any government watch lists. So when conservatives insist such a law wouldn’t have helped, they are right. But that doesn’t mean we should do nothing.
If it’s true a trip to Saudi Arabia radicalized the Farooks, then we will have to find out where they went and how it changed them. In the meantime, we should provide law enforcement greater tools with which to counter the carnage.
But don’t hold your breath. If the gun lobby and their hired hands in Congress stand in the way of every single sensible reform, nothing will get done. Just as nothing has been done. And we’ll have more of these episodes, more carnage, more dead bodies.
This story was originally published December 3, 2015 at 5:10 PM with the headline "Our View: With 14 dead, isn’t it time we did something?."