SHOOTINGS: WHAT WILL IT TAKE?

Following the alarming instances of school shootings in October 2015, the magazine, The Week, devoted the cover of a recent edition to the problem with a blazing headline, The endless vigil: Are we powerless to stop mass killings? Apparently we ARE powerless.

Nine weeks in 2018 there have been more a least 14 school shootings in the U.S.—an average of 1.5 shootings a week.

The Week quoted Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times. “No single new law is going to solve the problem of gun violence, but we dramatically cut the rate of auto fatalities through the passage of multiple regulations—requiring driver’s licenses, seat belts, air bags, safety glass, etc. If we take the same incremental approach to guns—universal background checks, safe-storage laws, and careful licensing of gun owners—we might save thousands of lives a year. Locking up all angry loners in advance is not an option.”

The magazine then added, “We’re all crazy if we can’t take modest steps to reduce the carnage that leaves America resembling a battlefield.”

Kristof is on the money. We need to begin taking modest steps on a wide variety of fronts in an effort to curb the slaughter; we are all crazy if we don’t. (To be continued)