Here we go again. Another mass shooting and more “thoughts and prayers” versus angry tweets disconnected from the political landscape of the gun issue. Plus plenty of blaming. In U.S. News & World Report I look at different strategies we might try, since the ones we have are not working:
The school massacre in Florida is horrifying. Seventeen families grieving children they sent off to school as if on any other day. Other families facing all manner of trauma. And again, the hope that maybe this will be the one that changes politics and policies
Don’t bet on it.
If a classroom full of first-graders getting gunned down wasn’t a shock to the system, a building full of college students or 58 people at a concert, then why will this latest horror show change anything?
Gun control groups tell us they’re winning or just a few votes or little more in donations away from turning the tide. Really? The big gun debate animating Washington right now is over whether to make state concealed carry permits reciprocal among the states so that if you’re licensed to carry anywhere you’re licensed to carry everywhere. That might sound sensible except for the tremendous variation in what it takes to get a permit in different states. In practice it’s a race to the bottom that tramples on states’ rights.
In fact, what usually happens in the wake of these shootings is a loosening of gun laws, not “common sense gun reform”…
