The carnage will continue if ‘do nothing’ prevails: Editorial

It’s utterly distressing that dozens of people were slaughtered and hundreds more injured by a deranged gunman in Las Vegas, and the country is politically paralyzed to do anything about it.

The Republican-controlled Congress, beholden to the gun lobby, has steadfastly refused to act on even the most rudimentary, common-sense changes to the gun laws, including banning certain assault-style weapons and expanding background checks and wait times.

Let’s face it: Americans are not safe. Sadly enough, they do have legitimate reasons to be concerned every time they take mass transit or gather for sporting or music events at arenas and stadiums. Even the slaying of children – as occurred in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2013 – wasn’t enough to summon Congress to take decisive action.

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True, all the legislation in the world isn’t going to stop some people from committing atrocities if they are fueled by hate or are emotionally unbalanced or both.

But it could lessen the impact. Tightening the gun laws could save lives, and that should be reason enough to act – and it has to be done on the federal level. Too often, guns are being purchased in states with lax standards and then transported to states like New York with tougher laws. And too often, the gunmen have criminal histories or documented mental health problems, yet they still were able to obtain the guns easily.

It’s true the gunman in the Las Vegas shooting doesn’t apparently fit the profile we typically see. Stephen Paddock didn’t have a criminal record or reported history of a mental illness. But in several of the most horrifying cases – including the slayings in Sandy Hook – the perpetrators were able to obtain assault-style weapons that were once illegal under a federal ban that Congress let expire more than a decade ago. As for Paddock, he owned more than 40 guns and had nearly two dozen of them with him in his hotel suite where he opened fire of a massive crowd at a concert below. Paddock’s arsenal included semiautomatic rifles affixed with bump stocks. That device can be used to make semi-automatic weapons perform like machine guns, which is perfectly legal. It’s completely insane that, as a country, we would make it so easy for a person to slaughter other people this way.

New York lawmakers are now seeking an outright ban on bump stocks. As is, it’s illegal to affix a bump stock to a semiautomatic weapon, but the device itself isn’t illegal. Gaping inconsistencies and loopholes like this are not making the country any safer.

Of course, tighter gun laws are only part of the answer. A whole lot of consideration should be given to what Leah Libresco, a statistician and former newswriter at the data journalism site FiveThirtyEight, pointed out in recent column in the Washington Post. When it comes to reducing gun violence, she said months of research showed, “The best ideas left standing were narrowly tailored interventions to protect subtypes of potential victims, not broad attempts to limit the lethality of guns.” They include focusing on suicide prevention, curbing gang-related street violence and protecting victims of domestic violence.

Comprehensive solutions are needed, including providing the necessary resources for better mental-health services in this country. One thing ought to be abundantly clear: Doing nothing is not an option. The carnage will continue unless the country acts decisively and in bold ways.