Our view on shooting sprees: Death at church, and the mall
Colorado came into contact with a horrifying phenomenon of modern life: A deranged killer who believes he'll somehow find fulfillment by gunning down strangers.
The incidents by separate gunmen on Dec. 5 and Dec. 9 came so close together that it felt as if some new threshold of depravity had been crossed. The truth, however, is that such indiscriminate shooting sprees now happen with depressing regularity in the USA — the seemingly inevitable byproduct of a society in which guns are readily accessible to unhinged people who slaughter innocents.
There were at least seven such incidents in 2005 and eight in 2006, and there have been seven in 2007. This year's carnage started in February with another shopping mall shooting, in Salt Lake City, where a teenage gunman killed five before being shot dead by police. It was followed in April by the worst mass shooting in the nation's history, when a student at Virginia Tech shot 47, killing 32, before killing himself. How quickly a numbed nation has moved on, and how horrific a slaughter it takes to generate national attention these days.
Spree killings are, of course, just a small percentage of the gun-violence toll in the USA. The latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that nearly 30,000 people were killed by firearms in 2004, of which about 39% were homicides, 57% suicides and 2% accidents. That's about eight times the number of Americans killed in the Iraq war so far.
Each shooting spree elicits demands to make the insanity stop. Sadly, there's no easy solution. The nation has a vast cultural divide about gun ownership and has settled for stalemate — outrage at the death toll but determination to protect the rights of Americans to bear arms.
Gun control laws have had a limited impact, and the pet proposal of the gun lobby — letting people carry concealed weapons — is a nonsensical answer. Even with more people packing heat, the likelihood of such a person being at the scene of a spree shooting is exceedingly low. (The woman who ended the incident at the Colorado Springs church was a congregant and former cop who volunteered as part of the church's security program.)
With more and more people carrying weapons in public, no matter how well-intentioned, the risk of accidental shootings and additional violence rises. Security on campuses, shopping malls, airports, churches and other public places is best left to professionals.
The best way forward is to keep at the imperfect but important fixes that can eventually make these shootings less murderous and more rare: Ensuring that people with a history of mental illness aren't able to buy guns; taking disturbed young people seriously and getting them counseling; and reinstating the lapsed ban on assault weapons, despite the opposition of the gun lobby.
None of these steps is foolproof, but neither does any of them trample gun rights. The lack of a perfect solution is no reason for society to throw up its hands and accept the unacceptable.
Yahoo News
Colorado came into contact with a horrifying phenomenon of modern life: A deranged killer who believes he'll somehow find fulfillment by gunning down strangers.
The incidents by separate gunmen on Dec. 5 and Dec. 9 came so close together that it felt as if some new threshold of depravity had been crossed. The truth, however, is that such indiscriminate shooting sprees now happen with depressing regularity in the USA — the seemingly inevitable byproduct of a society in which guns are readily accessible to unhinged people who slaughter innocents.
There were at least seven such incidents in 2005 and eight in 2006, and there have been seven in 2007. This year's carnage started in February with another shopping mall shooting, in Salt Lake City, where a teenage gunman killed five before being shot dead by police. It was followed in April by the worst mass shooting in the nation's history, when a student at Virginia Tech shot 47, killing 32, before killing himself. How quickly a numbed nation has moved on, and how horrific a slaughter it takes to generate national attention these days.
Spree killings are, of course, just a small percentage of the gun-violence toll in the USA. The latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that nearly 30,000 people were killed by firearms in 2004, of which about 39% were homicides, 57% suicides and 2% accidents. That's about eight times the number of Americans killed in the Iraq war so far.
Each shooting spree elicits demands to make the insanity stop. Sadly, there's no easy solution. The nation has a vast cultural divide about gun ownership and has settled for stalemate — outrage at the death toll but determination to protect the rights of Americans to bear arms.
Gun control laws have had a limited impact, and the pet proposal of the gun lobby — letting people carry concealed weapons — is a nonsensical answer. Even with more people packing heat, the likelihood of such a person being at the scene of a spree shooting is exceedingly low. (The woman who ended the incident at the Colorado Springs church was a congregant and former cop who volunteered as part of the church's security program.)
With more and more people carrying weapons in public, no matter how well-intentioned, the risk of accidental shootings and additional violence rises. Security on campuses, shopping malls, airports, churches and other public places is best left to professionals.
The best way forward is to keep at the imperfect but important fixes that can eventually make these shootings less murderous and more rare: Ensuring that people with a history of mental illness aren't able to buy guns; taking disturbed young people seriously and getting them counseling; and reinstating the lapsed ban on assault weapons, despite the opposition of the gun lobby.
None of these steps is foolproof, but neither does any of them trample gun rights. The lack of a perfect solution is no reason for society to throw up its hands and accept the unacceptable.
Yahoo News
