It always seems improper to bring up politics immediately after a mass shooting. We have all learned at our mother's knee that in tragedy those closest to the victims are the priority. We pull together, we say nice things, we show support. Usually, it is the right thing to do when events like the shooting today in Washington, DC happen.
Events like these. That's the problem. Events. Pleural. And these events aren't even discrete, they are a series of connected events, one following another, and always the same story: A lone nut, isolated, mentally ill, a crazy who was able to legally buy enough ammo to hold off a platoon, decides to use it to kill a dozen or so people he has never met. And each time there is some talk about mental health, a lot of blustering about gun control, and a spitting match that ends with the usual big government-little government fisticuffs that rolls like an avalanche down a mountain, and, like an avalanche, makes a huge racket before stopping when it gets to the bottom. And nothing is done.
Imagine you live in a city. There is a new fire that burns a large building to the ground every few weeks. What is the sensible thing to do? Maybe review the fire code? Or you could just sit on your hands and watch buildings burn and people die and say, "The law says people can live and work wherever they want to. It's the Constitution. Nothing to do here." Never mind that it is the same story over and over again, the same fire pattern, the same problems the firemen have fighting it. When I was in school I was taught that when the same thing happens to you over and over again you learn from it, but I hear schools are different these days.
This is a series of connected events. Not connected because they are being perpetrated by the same person, but because the same story plays out each time. An angry, perhaps psychotic, individual who has unlimited access to deadly firearms decides he wants to die, and plans on taking as many people with him as possible. Connected. Now is the time to break the chain.
Let's say you do believe guns are a natural human right. Right to breathe, right to vote, right to shoot. How often does this have to happen before you might say something must be done with gun laws? A mass shooting every week? Every day? Every hour? Are you saying there is no limit whatsoever?
Because I am saying if there is a limit to the number of mass shootings you are willing to tolerate in your neighborhood, maybe the thing to do is to begin considering curbing gun laws before you reach your limit. Sooner rather later, sooner than waiting for more bodies to pile up before you've decided enough is enough, maybe let's cut back on the armor piercing bullets a touch. Problems are easier to handle when you head them off before catastrophe hits. Although some of us would say we've already reached that stage, I am willing to concede that others may not see things as reaching the limit yet. But if you can say that at some point there is a thing called too much, that is as good as saying there is a time and place for gun control.
Knowing that, why not now. Why not take control of the argument and put reasonable rules in place, instead of waiting for the anger to mount against your side until laws that are too extreme for your taste are on the books?
Sandy Hook happened, our leaders did nothing. So now there is another one. I'm not saying "we" did nothing anymore; I don't oppose reasonable gun laws. I think the need to stop what is not a series of events but instead an epidemic means we must dispense with the "too soon" talk, before "too soon" becomes "too late" for a dozen more people.