P resident Donald Trump tried his best to be consoling and reassuring this week following yet another mass shooting — this one in Florida that took 17 lives, mostly of high school students.
Speaking directly to America’s children, who might be traumatized by the massacre in Parkland, Florida, and other high-profile shootings at schools throughout the country, the president said, “I want you to know that you are never alone and you never will be. You have people who care about you, who love you, and who will do anything at all to protect you.”
Sadly, that is not completely true. There are many Americans — including the majorities in Congress — who will not do “anything at all” to stop the ease with which deranged individuals can kill innocent people en masse.
They won’t enact greater restrictions on the semi-automatic, assault-style rifles that have become the mass-killing weapon of choice. They won’t outlaw bump stocks that can, with terrifyingly grisly results, convert a semi-automatic rifle into an automatic-firing one. They won’t even make it harder for the young and mentally ill to get their hands on these weapons.
The president, who was backed by the gun lobby in winning the White House in 2016, would not even mention guns while addressing the Florida massacre. Instead he focused his remarks on addressing the problem of the violently mentally ill.
Certainly, mental illness is a major factor in these mass killings. You have to be crazy to do what Nikolas Cruz allegedly did at the Parkland high school, what Devin Patrick Kelley did at a small Baptist church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, what Stephen Paddock did at a concert in Las Vegas, what Adam Lanza did at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, and the list goes depressingly on and on.
But also undeniable factors are the proliferation of weapons and the attendant glamorization of violence in American culture.
Those who resist even the most modest gun controls say that those determined to kill innocent people will still find ways to do it, no matter what laws are enacted. Maybe so, but at least we could make some attempt to reduce the amount of carnage that can be inflicted at any one time.
Maybe doing something won’t work. But doing nothing certainly hasn’t.
