There is scarcely anyone among Hawaii residents, for whom Las Vegas is like “the 9th island,” whose heart did not ache for the victims of Sunday’s horrific shooting massacre, and for their families. Sadness would be the natural, universal reaction to such tragic loss wherever it occurred. Dozens were killed that night, and 500-plus suffered injuries, in the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.
Yet somehow, because it happened in a place many isle residents know like the back of their hand, the shock wave resonates even more deeply.
Sympathy for the local residents of Las Vegas, and the visitors who witnessed the terrible events near the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino, pours out, unobstructed, from all corners of the country. It seems Americans all want and need to come together with condolences, in a profound embrace.
But then the body politic will pull everyone apart and rushing back to their respective corners, as usual. True healing will mean that we all must resist that impulse and resolve to come together for one more purpose: searching for a way to reduce gun violence in America.
Usually that discussion breaks down along familiar fault lines. On one side, gun-rights advocates insist that aberrations such as the heinous act by Stephen Paddock should not dictate the national policy on guns. By and large, they stand against new regulations to tighten gun controls because they generally would not have prevented the mass shooting of the hour.
Making mental health treatment more available has been a call to action for those making the pro-gun-rights argument. Of course, it doesn’t appear that the shooter’s mental health was core to this case, either.
On the other side, gun-control advocates point to the need for universal background checks, limits on ammunition or even a ban on assault weapons of the kind used by Paddock. Police said he had 23 guns in his 32nd-floor hotel room, from which bullets rained down on an innocent concert crowd below, before he turned a gun on himself.
The fact that even incremental regulatory changes have proved to be such a heavy lift for politicians is incredibly disheartening. There is plainly something wrong with a society in which these gruesome events keep happening and there is no effort to correct. We ignore this failing at our continued, worsening peril.
It’s true that most of these proposed regulatory fixes are not capable of preventing a “lone wolf” rampage of this kind. Paddock was not on anyone’s radar from a security standpoint. He may have had financial and emotional problems that pushed him over the edge, but neither is there evidence yet that a course of mental health treatment would have averted this tragedy.
Gun violence is clearly not unique to the U.S., as multiple terrorist attacks in Europe and elsewhere can illustrate. But what’s especially pernicious here is the sheer ease in which powerful weapons can be purchased and transported repeatedly; Paddock had amassed an arsenal in his hotel room. Owning and carrying them is touted as a constitutionally protected right.
National leaders must begin the search for steps to take in a new direction, to change the way we think about guns. The rhetoric has long centered on gun rights. Americans have fetishized guns as an instrument of power, but not enough is said about the responsibility to protect public safety.
Some reasonable action should be taken to constrain the acquisition and management of guns and ammunition, even if it only starts with background checks before purchases or various security measures.
Other social objectives have been met this way, over time. Auto safety has been a labor of myriad small improvements, but the result is fewer fatalities — and just as much car ownership.
Controlling gun violence is another achievable goal that lies decades away — so let’s begin discussing now how to start the journey.
