Again the trigger is pulled. Again the bullets enter flesh. Again the bodies fall. Again parents, spouses and other loved ones mourn. Again the politicians say we must not let it happen again.
Again we who have lived through this too many times know that it will happen again. And again. And again. Because our nation is sick.
Sick with young men, in many cases young white men, raging against women and minorities and a wider pluralistic society with which they are at war. Sick with a culture that glorifies violence as a solution. Sick with mental health problems undiagnosed and untreated.
Sick more than anything with firearms, firearms everywhere, firearms easy to find and easy to load with rounds of deadly ammunition and easy to fire. Because of them, dangerous ideology is exponentially more dangerous.
White supremacist anger meets powerlessness meets equipment designed to kill in bunches, and it is no surprise this fetid funereal routine is so familiar.
Until a president and Congress unclench their hands, let go the dead ideology that guns are part of the solution and not part of the problem, until they attack the corrosive ideology driving young men to kill to save the white nation they never had and were never promised, we will write another version of this editorial again.
— New York Daily News