Inaction only worsens mass shootings

The rate of mass shootings in America accelerates anew.

The death of three women and one man by gunshot, discovered last weekend in a remote California desert community, counted as the 19th incident this year in which four or more people, excluding the offender, were killed. That's the most for a January-through-April period since such data began to be tallied in 2006 by The Associated Press and USA Today in partnership with Northeastern University.

Ninety-seven people died in those 19 episodes.

And those tallies had yet to add in the discovery on Monday of seven people found fatally shot in the head, five of them teenagers, in an apparent murder-suicide in rural Oklahoma. Then, on Wednesday, a 24-year-old Atlanta man opened fire in the waiting room of a local medical practice, killing one person and wounding four. Only last week, five people were slaughtered in Cleveland, Texas, allegedly by a neighbor. And it seems like eons since April 15 when at least 89 rounds were fired in a shootout that killed four people at a girl's Sweet 16 party in Alabama.

Closer to home, on Wednesday, a Nassau County jury found Gabriel Wilson guilty of murder in the 2021 shooting spree at a West Hempstead Stop & Shop that left grocery manager Ray Wishropp dead and two other employees severely injured.

The rolling landscape shows a mix of murders. The diversity of people involved is striking. Shooters and victims alike varied by age, gender, ethnic background, religious creed, place of residence, occupation, immigration status, and socioeconomic profile. This is about all of us.

Motives also vary: Domestic violence, gang retaliation, school shootings, workplace vendettas, and sometimes raw hate and group blame. These incidents continue to arise from a long-lived social pathology of violence that has evolved into a negative U.S. brand.

In Serbia, a 13-year-old killed eight fellow students and a security guard at his school in a planned attack. That prompted devastating commentary on how infrequent these incidents are overseas compared to the U.S., even though illegal guns have long saturated the Balkans. 

Obviously, the callous refusal of one faction of American politicians to effectively regulate weapons is a factor. Waiting and pushing for that to change has proved futile for years. Going deeper, we're talking about a lesser value of human life with discussions about education, the justice system, morals, theology, mental disorders, addictions, fantasies, impulses, anger, instant gratification, isolation, political polarization and exactly who we are and why we kill.

The goal of public safety — an end to all this senseless killing — requires big collective action. What should that be? How? Can we the people agree on any strategy before this dystopian horror show completely cripples the nation?

A worsening emergency that has become old news creates one monster of a tantalizing national challenge. Any way you cut it, it's still first and foremost about the guns and who uses them.