Shootings becoming new U.S. norm

USA TODAY | The News-Press

This editorial started as an attempt to make some sense of the shooting of 12 people, three fatally, at the Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs last Friday. But in America these days, you never have to wait very long for the next mass shooting, and sure enough, the terrible event in Colorado was eclipsed just five days later by an even more horrific one on Wednesday in San Bernardino, Calif. As many as three shooters opened fire in a facility for people with developmental disabilities, killing 14 and wounding 17.

Though the number of shooters — including one male and one female who were killed by police — didn't fit the usual pattern, there was otherwise an alarming sameness to the news out of California. People who had survived by hiding under desks and behind locked doors talked about falling back on their “active shooter” training, as if that's the new normal in U.S. workplaces, as typical as coffee breaks and football pools. A law enforcement official said much the same, telling reporters that authorities had activated “the things we train for.” TV coverage showed people streaming out of the Inland Regional Center with their hands up as police made sure none of them was actually one of the shooters — a strange scene Americans have by now watched over and over again.

In countries where shootings like this are rare or non-existent, people rolled their eyes. “Just another day in the United States of America,” intoned Britain’s BBC in its report on San Bernardino. “Another day of gunfire, panic and fear.”

That’s snarky but hard to dispute. There are so many of these to remember. Barely two months ago, a deranged 26-year-old man who owned 14 weapons, all bought legally, shot and killed eight students and a teacher at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Ore. In June, a similarly unhinged 21-year-old man used the Glock handgun he had bought with birthday money to shoot nine people at a Bible study meeting in a church basement in Charleston. S.C.

But even by the standards of an American culture where mass shootings threaten to become routine, events like the ones in the past several days still retain the power to shock and anger, and to command the nation’s attention. What they haven’t done is galvanize Americans to find a way to try to make them stop happening, or at least make them less frequent.

It’s a hellish problem. The Supreme Court has twice ruled that individuals have a right to own guns, and polls show Americans about evenly split between support for gun rights and gun control restrictions. Much as the most ardent anti-gun advocates want it, the U.S. won’t follow other nations that have banned most private gun ownership or forced citizens to sell back certain weapons to the government.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t worthwhile ideas for limiting the carnage. Liberals tend to focus on guns and conservatives on the problem of mental health. Both have a point. This doesn't have to be an either/or debate.

On guns, proposals that could cut down on the carnage are well known: universal background checks; bans on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines; and aggressive enforcement against rogue gun dealers who “lose” weapons that show up later on the black market, or who condone gun purchases by straw buyers because the real buyers couldn’t pass a background check.

As for mental health, a new California law that goes into effect Jan. 1 might help stop some deranged shooters; it would allow family members or police to ask a judge for a “gun violence restraining order” to temporarily confiscate guns from someone who is clearly disturbed.

Separately, the restrictions that bar people from legally buying guns have remained largely the same for almost 50 years; they merit being updated to screen out more people who have displayed violent behavior. Even when a judge finds someone mentally ill, many states still don’t reliably send the records to the federal database used to screen gun buyers. According to a report last year by Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund, 12 states have submitted fewer than 100 records to the database, an appalling lapse.

The work of reducing the gun carnage that has come to define America in the rest of the world will not be done quickly, but it has to begin.