Once more, gun madness strikes

Are too many Americans so used to gun violence that the mass shooting an Oregon community college on Thursday will fail to spur a desperately needed dialogue, and then action, on gun violence? We must hope that is not the case.

Now, nine innocent people are dead, slaughtered at the hand of a lone gunman, about whom not much is known except that in a demented moment, he decided to take multiple guns and kill people. Once again a school became a killing field. Once again, someone who never should have had a gun had several.

President Obama noted that shootings had become so frequent he wondered whether people have “become numb to this.” He also anticipated the reaction of groups such as the National Rifle Association, which fight any new gun regulation with contributions to the politicians from the statehouse to the Congress and seem always to win despite polls showing that the public is not opposed to responsible gun control.

“And what’s become routine, of course, is the response of those who oppose any kind of common-sense gun legislation,” Obama said. “Right now, I can imagine the press releases being cranked out. ‘We need more guns,’ they’ll argue. ‘Fewer gun-safety laws.’ Does anybody really believe that?”

The sheriff in Roseburg, Ore., 180 miles south of Portland, handled the aftermath of the shooting deaths at Umpqua Community College as well as could be expected. But Sheriff John Hanlin is among long-time opponents of gun control, and he once wrote Vice President Joe Biden after the 2012 shootings at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., that he would refuse to enforce any new federal restrictions on guns. That preposterous and, in light of the shootings in Newtown, disrespectful act should haunt the sheriff now.

America is more heavily armed than ever, but repeated mass shootings show it is hardly more safe. Gun regulation is uneven, weak and haphazardly enforced. And as Obama has noted, these sorts of mass shootings do not happen with this kind of frequency in other countries, where gun regulation is seen as valuable and sensible, not as a threat to freedom.

When the much-defended Second Amendment was passed, America was a rural, sparsely populated country where militias were custom and common. But gun control opponents continue to defend the “right to bear arms” as sacred.

The frequency with which innocents are slaughtered by people with guns would appall the Founding Fathers. Everytown for Gun Safety, a group that supports reforms to reduce gun violence, reports that the gunfire in Oregon was the 45th shooting at a school this year.

This story was originally published October 3, 2015 at 5:57 AM with the headline "Once more, gun madness strikes."