(This cartoon image is by Adam Zyglis in The Buffalo News.)Another mass shooting has happened -- this time in Las Vegas. It is not an anomaly. Mass shootings (the shooting of 4 or more people) happened nearly every day in the United States. And more than 30,000 people die every year from guns. A reasonable people would see this as unacceptable, and they would do something to stop it -- but evidently, we are not a reasonable people (and have decided that allowing any nut to have a gun is more important than the lives of our fellow citizens).
Here is what legendary journalist Dan Rather has to say:
The names of the victims are becoming public, and with them life stories that were cut short much too soon in a bloody, vicious, hail of terror. Read of their families, hobbies, friends and occupations. Hear about the dreams they had that will now go forever unfulfilled. See in the pictures of smiling faces a cost that many politicians will say is beyond our ability to control. The civilized world looks at us and cannot comprehend. Why? Why, in the wake of mass shootings, time and time again, is there no action? Why not even modest measures that can help, that polling suggests with which a vast majority of Americans (even gun owners) approve? It seems that the conventional wisdom is that once again nothing will change. The only difference may be that some new pro-gun bills will not come to a vote - for now. This is due to the imbalance of money and influence in politics. The National Rifle Association and other affiliate groups strike most people as brooking no compromise. And, unfortunately, there is much history to support that view. The NRA and its allies seem to want a world in which anyone, with or no check, can purchase guns in quantities fit for an army. Their power is that they lavish money on politicians who are willing to push their agenda, and they are unrelenting against those who will not. Meanwhile, the gun control side of the political divide is fractured. There doesn't seem to be a coalition of political support willing to mass voters on this issue. Will the carnage in Las Vegas change that? If the past is prologue, almost certainly not. Isn’t there some common ground, even some small compromises we as a people can reach on this stalemate? I see the intransigence on this issue as yet another symbol of our fractured government. This is something on which fair minded people could come to some consensus. The American people, if left to their own devices, almost certainly would. We can unite around some common sense, if the politicians and the lobbyists would allow us.
