The National Rifle Association wants to make last week’s high school shooting in Texas all about building security. The answer, as robotically recited by various officials, is to harden schools, establish airport-style security checkpoints, add more armed guards and allow teachers to pack heat.
But apparently no number of young people’s corpses and grieving parents will move the organization to discuss the real issue: reducing shooters’ access to their mass-killing weapons of choice.
The killer at Santa Fe High School in Texas, Dimitrios Pagourtzis, 17, used weapons that many Americans would regard as permissible with common-sense gun control. His weapons, a shotgun and .38-caliber revolver belonging to his father, contrasted with the rapid-fire assault rifles and high-capacity magazines of previous mass shootings. Regardless, the boy had no business gaining access to them.
But there is no single, simple answer to address the myriad factors in mass-shooting rampages. Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott thinks the answer is for “everyone” to sit down and talk about it. What more is left to discuss after the school mass tragedies in Columbine, Colo.; Virginia Tech; Sandy Hook elementary in Connecticut; or Parkland, Fla.?
Does Abbott truly want to entertain common-sense solutions, or is he more interested in diverting the conversation away from solutions that might make his major NRA campaign donors uncomfortable? We suspect it’s the latter because a familiar pattern developed right after the bodies were cleared from the scene of Friday’s shootings.
Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, drawing directly from NRA talking points, insisted the tragedy shouldn’t be used as a political tool to punish law-abiding gun owners. He then quickly turned the discussion to abortion, violent video games and respect for life.
Newly installed NRA President Oliver North did exactly the same on Sunday talk shows. “You are not going to fix it by taking away the rights of law-abiding citizens,” he told Fox News. He told ABC News: “We have devalued life, whether it’s through abortion, whether it’s the breakup of families or violent movies and particularly violent video games.”
The lone voice of common sense was Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo, who said thoughts and prayers won’t substitute for action to limit gun rights.
The NRA is so overwhelmed by mass shootings, it apparently can’t keep up with the pace. As of Monday, its website was still fixated on the Feb. 14 mass shooting in Florida instead of updating it to acknowledge the Texas victims.
These shootings are now so commonplace, they don’t last more than a few news cycles before being overtaken by volcano spatter or outrageous presidential tweets. If images of grieving parents and young corpses aren’t enough to make Americans focus on the real problem, perhaps our next thoughts and prayers should be for the lost soul of our nation.
— St. Louis Post-Dispatch