Let’s forget this idea that the aftermath of a horrendous mass shooting, such as the one that occurred a week ago in Las Vegas, is not the time to talk about gun control.
It’s only when there is a huge spilling of innocent blood in one locale — whether Vegas, or Newtown, Conn., or Aurora, Colo. — that this country can be persuaded to focus on its over-gunning of the population.
Still, it would be surprising if the Vegas massacre turns out to be a major turning point in the discussion. As one national commentator remarked, if the killing of 20 children ages 6 to 7 doesn’t move the country to restrict assault weapons, don’t expect the killing of 58 country music fans to do it either.
The Republican majorities in Congress are either too aligned philosophically with the National Rifle Association and the rest of the gun lobby — or too scared of crossing them — to take steps to reduce the flow of high-powered weapons to civilians.
Separately from politics, there also is a great amount of distrust between gun owners and gun-control advocates, making it difficult to reach a commonsense middle ground.
Gun owners, the majority of whom are law-abiding, contend the media are biased in their coverage of guns. They point to cities — such as Chicago — where gun-control measures have appeared to do little to reduce gun deaths.
They argue it is as unfair to demonize guns when they are used in acts of terrorism as it would be to demonize pressure cookers, which the Boston Marathon bombers demonstrated can be turned into grisly killing machines, too.
Gun-control advocates don’t understand these arguments. They say that, although Chicago’s gun deaths might be shocking in total, on a per capita basis they are lower than in a lot of rural areas where gun restrictions are few. They point out that a lot of the illegal guns making their way to Chicago originate in states, such as Mississippi, where they are easier to purchase.
They acknowledge there are lots of devious ways to end other people’s lives, but nothing compares with guns in doing it on a steady basis. They are incredulous at the refusal of the gun lobby to acknowledge the connection in this country between gun numbers — more than one gun for every adult in the U.S. — and gun deaths.
It seems — for now at least — that the majority of both sides in the gun debate agree that there is no compellingly good argument for “bump stocks.” Even many gun owners had never heard of that accessory before last week, when it was reported that the Vegas shooter, Stephen Paddock, had used it to get his semi-automatic weapons to mimic fully automatic ones.
Even if bump stocks are outlawed, though, that will make hardly a dent in reducing the number of mass shootings in the United States, which number almost one a day if you accept the common definition of a “mass shooting” as one in which at least four people, not counting the shooter, are killed or wounded.
Even without bump stocks, Paddock would have been able to kill a bunch of folks with the semi-automatic rifles he stockpiled in his hotel suite overlooking the concert venue.
AR15s might look like menacing military-style weapons to people who aren’t into guns, but to a farmer who is trying to keep wild hogs from eating up his profits, they are the weapon of choice for a very practical reason. When you are trying to get rid of a brood of wily predators, firing speed is desirable.
If reaching consensus on curbing the sale of semi-automatic weapons is not possible, at least restricting the size of the ammunition magazines with which they are loaded should be. Ten shots before having to change out a magazine is plenty for any legitimate purpose.
The whole point is to slow down the killers, to make it harder for them to slaughter so many people so quickly, to give their potential victims a few more seconds that could mean the difference between life and death.
Dating back to the 1930s, this country agreed that the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms isn’t limitless; that there are some weapons for which there is no compelling civilian purpose. It accepted that the greater public good was served by reducing the firepower of organized crime by heavily restricting the manufacture and sale of machine guns, even if it inconvenienced some gun collectors.
The massacre in Vegas is the latest summons for those enamored with guns and those who don’t understand their appeal to find some middle ground that would reduce the frequency of these kinds of horrific stories.
