March 29, 2024

Another view on mass shootings

A recent letter to the editor made some rather bizarre claims about the recent spate of mass shootings around the country.

One claim was that all these killings went up when the call was begun to “Defund the Police.” Truth is, these killings increased after the 10-year Federal Assault Weapons Ban was allowed to expire when Congress refused to renew the ban in 2004. During the time the ban was in effect, mass shootings went down 37 percent and then went up 183 percent when it expired.

Another claim is that no laws or bans will stop mass shootings. If that were true, then why aren’t other countries with laws and bans against these weapons seeing these mass shootings at a rate of more than one per day like in this country? Answer is, they aren’t because those laws and bans work. That argument is lost before it begins.

And to use Chicago as an example doesn’t work because the guns being used to commit those crimes are coming in from other places with lax gun laws. The entire country needs to be on the same page for those laws to have any effect on crime.

And lastly, the letter writer pleads us to “take a breath” and console those grieving from these shootings. Is that what the families of the victims want or is that just to make the letter writer feel better? From what I’ve seen, the families of those victims are the ones speaking the loudest about how something needs to be done. And they are being ignored in favor of “thoughts and prayers.”

By the time we have all “taken a breath” and let it out and finished praying, there will have been a couple more shootings and many more victims.

And the cycle will just continue ...

John Moore

Newton