Pirate's Cove

They end up missing the mark on what’s going on and how to solve it by a tiny bit a mile

Mass shootings are becoming routine. It doesn’t have to be this way.

THE TIME of mourning for the victims of mass shootings in America, including those a week ago in El Paso and Dayton, Ohio, may never end. The time for policymaking action, though, has definitely arrived. It is long overdue.

The United States faces a grave threat to public safety. The Post reports that mass shootings took place roughly twice a year between 1966 and the massacre at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., in 1999. Between Columbine and the slaughter at a predominantly African American church in Charleston, S.C., in June 2015, the pace was roughly five times a year. Since the white-supremacist attack in Charleston, there’s been one almost every six weeks. And these data reflect a restrictive definition of mass shootings: those that claimed at least four lives, not including perpetrators, in public places or large private gatherings. GunViolenceArchive.org’s broader definition, which encompasses a wider-range of multiple-victim shootings, fatal and nonfatal — including those tied to such crimes as robbery and domestic abuse — produces 254 just this year, through last Wednesday.

The majority of those “mass shootings” actually occur in the streets of Democratic Party run cities and states with heavy gun control.

Background checks and so-called red-flag laws, the subject of another bill backed by Sens. Lindsey O.Graham (R-S.C.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), represent only the bare minimum of reform. To tackle the specific, acute problem of mass public shootings, Congress must address the actual hardware: assault-style firearms, along with large-capacity magazines. Both should be banned, as assault weapons were at the federal level between 1994 and 2004, and as the law in several states already provides.

Would this include banning the weapons and mags currently owned after being purchased legally? They don’t say. If history is to be believed, there would be a blanket ban on “large” magazines for current owners, like in California and New York. And when those bans do not work? What’s next? Ban all semi-autos, including handguns and hunting rifles? Perhaps with almost impossible to get permits? The Australia/New Zealand solution? New Zealand banned pretty much all semi-autos excluding .22 rimfire rifles. So, cannot even have a big hunting rifle unless it is bolt action. No semi-auto handguns. Even pump-action shotguns holding more than 5 shells are banned.

What’s next? Revolvers? Because criminals will just go with those next. How about those .22’s, when they are used for crime. The gun grabbing never ends.

In emphasizing measures to stop mass public shootings, we do not forget that the vast majority of gun-related death occurs in — alas — more ordinary contexts. Suicide, street crime and domestic violence are chronic problems, and they also cry out for intelligent response. But what we must refer to as “conventional” homicide has waned even as mass public shootings have increased. Swift action aimed specifically at this socially destabilizing phenomenon is a must, lest our public spaces become places of permanent latent anxiety, subject to random lethal attack — or, as occurred in Times Square the other day, panicked stampedes at the sound of a motorcycle backfire.

So, what are they going to do about those? Taking away guns will not stop suicides. Democrats have been uber-soft on crime for decades. The last one who cared was Bill Clinton. Since then, their policies are like over-cooked pasta or ice cream in the sun. And, again, if “gun violence” has increased tremendously in super-gun restrictive areas like Baltimore, Chicago, New Jersey, and California, among others, how does taking lawfully purchased items away from law abiding citizens, turning them into criminals if they possess them, make a difference?