Serial tragedies: Gun violence in America

Opinion editorial published in the Las Vegas Sun by Brian Greenspun

I heard the officer say it. I know he meant it. I am sure he wished it were true.

In the immediate aftermath of yet another horrific mass shooting — this time it was the murder of nine members of the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) in San Jose, Calif. — the sheriff’s spokesman did his best to answer so many unanswerable questions from the media, which was trying to report the next chapter in the unrelenting story of gun violence in America.

He wasn’t the first spokesman to confront the public’s desire — no, need — for answers about why these shootings continue and, more importantly, why the greatest country on Earth allows them to continue.

And, sadly, he won’t be the last.

The United States of America — while it embraces the craziness of QAnon, the dangerous idiocy of “the big lie” about the 2020 presidential election, and the gross hypocrisy of a Republican Party gone over the edge — has settled into a routine. This routine has everyone in the country accepting the fact that there will be death and destruction, due to gun violence,every week or so and there is nothing, absolutely nothing, that our leaders in Washington and down the street are willing to do to stop it.

We have brought ourselves to our own knees by refusing to hold our leaders accountable to that very basic precept in the preamble to our Constitution — “insure domestic Tranquility” — which means exactly what it says.

There is nothing tranquil about being shot up on a daily basis — in the movie theaters, our grocery stores, at a concert and, yes, in our places of work — and living and dying with the knowledge that we are too weak, too afraid and too devoid of sufficient willpower to make the changes needed to keep ourselves, our friends and neighbors and our children safe.

That’s what struck me listening to that first news conference this past week in San Jose.

I know the spokesman meant to convey a message of security and safety amid the chaos of the carnage that lay before him in that transit yard. But when he told his fellow citizens that the shooter was dead and that they were “safe now,” he couldn’t possibly realize the enormity of the misinformation and false sense of security he was spreading.

No, America, we are not safe.

Just because some deranged shooter with a gun kills himself or is killed by responding police officers, we cannot possibly believe we will be safe. Or, more to the point, are safe.

Not when there is a mass shooting practically every week in America and not when those who are in positions of responsibility — elected leaders who can stop some, most or all of the senseless murders — won’t do a damn thing to keep their neighbors, constituents and countrymen safe and “tranquil.”

And we will never be safe until people wake up and accept the fact that a person’s politics and beliefs will not stop a bullet — just like we can’t stop COVID-19 based on party affiliation.

There is one other lesson that the VTA massacre has taught us — at least that part of us who have been deluding ourselves with yet another phony excuse not to act.

Too many people excuse inaction on gun safety laws by advancing the belief that common sense laws are not the answer. They claim that a “good man with a gun will stop a bad man with a gun” so there is no need to act.

That’s a lot of hooey.

Just across the street from the VTA, mere seconds away from the mayhem, were many, many good men with guns. The Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Department was just a few steps from the shooter and its officers couldn’t stop him from murdering nine innocent people.

These were people, I should add, who protected and served the lives of countless fellow citizens by doing their jobs in the most difficult and dangerous circumstances during the pandemic, only to be cut down for just “ doing their jobs” in a mostly post-COVID world.

California’s Gov. Gavin Newsom has seen what we have all witnessed in San Jose this week and across the country week after week after week.

I believe he spoke for every decent American when he said:

“There’s a numbness I imagine some of us are feeling about this because there is a sameness to this. Anywhere, USA....

“It begs the damn question: What the hell’s going on in the United States of America?”

“What the hell’s wrong with us?”

Yep. That’s the question.

Brian Greenspun is editor, publisher and owner of the Las Vegas Sun