Yes there is a solution to gun violence

What will it take to stop America's gun violence?

An opinion editorial published in The Virginia Pilot and reprinted in The Sun Chronicle, a Massachusetts newspaper.

Virginia Beach, VA- Twelve hard working innocent people were murdered in a mass shooting in Virginia Beach, on May 31, Friday afternoon.

The Virginia Beach community is now going through a process New Englanders know all too well because of the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, — remembering the lost, struggling with incomprehensible grief, wondering if life will ever return to normal and asking, over and over, “Why?”

But for too many, this is normal now. (A heinous "new normal")

The Virginia Beach shooting bears some resemblance to other workplace shootings, including the massacre at Hartford Distributors in Manchester, almost nine years ago, when a deranged and disgruntled shooter sought to take out all his frustrations on his coworkers.

The “why” question will echo — nobody will be able to satisfactorily pin down what motivates people to do this. 

But the “what” question can be answered: The shooter had easy access to deadly weapons. And that problem has a solution.

The Virginia Beach shooter is said to have purchased the weapons he used legally. Two .45-caliber handguns, one of which had a “suppressor” that quiets the weapon when fired, and several empty extended magazines were found at the scene.

Saying they were purchased legally doesn’t say much. 

Virginia’s gun laws are among the loosest in the nation, according to the Giffords Law Center, which gives it a grade of “D.” Even after the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007, when 32 people were killed, the state didn’t tighten up its gun laws as much as it could have.

Handgun purchasers in Virginia must undergo a background check to insure they are not convicted or indicted felons and that they do not have restraining orders.

There are few other restrictions.

There is no waiting period.

No license is required.

The only restrictions on the purchase of assault weapons are age and citizenship.

Machine guns must be registered with state police.

The looseness of the law might explain the Giffords Law Center finding that “in 2017, Virginia ... supplied crime guns to other states at the 12th highest rate among the states.

Virginia exported crime guns at nearly twice the national rate and nearly three times the rate at which it imported crime guns from other states.”

That underscores the need for legislation on the national level.

It’s plausible that the Virginia Beach shooter would have claimed fewer lives if he didn’t have access to those extended-capacity magazines. But engaging in an argument about hypotheticals is a distraction.

The concrete question is simple: Would stricter gun safety laws erect reasonable barriers to keep military-spec weapons from getting into the hands of madmen without infringing on the Second Amendment rights of responsible gun owners?

Yes. They would. With better federal laws, there would be fewer deaths from firearms.

Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam made stronger gun laws part of his 2017 campaign, but efforts to pass legislation that would limit gun magazine size and give local governments broader authority to ban guns in city buildings couldn’t get any traction in Virginia’s legislature.

In January, the legislature killed a bill that would have banned sales of large-capacity magazines such as the ones found in the Virginia Beach massacre.

But this is not a state-level problem. This is a national problem.

As of Monday, 167 people have been killed in 156 mass shootings just this year. The number will continue to grow.

It’s time to continue the push for national legislation similar to what Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut already have — a ban on assault weapons and extended magazines, among other smart restrictions.

Given the number of guns already in circulation in the country, it’s unlikely that legislation will end gun violence. But we cannot let it continue unabated.

The nation needs to look in its mirror and acknowledge the facts staring back at us: If we do not enact better gun safety legislation at the federal level, we share the responsibility for what comes next.

Preventable school gun violence in Washington state USA

Americans are justifiably concerned about the potential for the infectious Ebola virus to spread. Yet, the same people who are harboring fear about this disease appear unscathed about preventing the growing epidemic of gun violence, as it's infecting our nation at a much higher rate and with at least as much mortality as Ebola.

Now, even more preventable gun violence has occured in still another school shooting. This time, the preventable tragedy occurred in Washington State, at Marysville-Pilchuck High School, where a young gunman killed himself and one other person, while terrorizing the entire campus.  

CNN reports:  The shooter who opened fire Friday morning at Washington state's Marysville-Pilchuck High School played football and was recently named to the homecoming court.

Additionally, CNN provided data about the number of school shootings since the Newtown innocents massacre in Connecticut. 
In the horrifying report, the headline asks if school shootings are becoming the norm?

There have been 74 school shootings in the past 18 months, during
the time period since the December 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, where 20 children and six adults were shot to death. The statistic came from a group called Everytown for Gun Safety, an umbrella group started by former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a passionate and public advocate of gun control.

It's certainly incongruous for Americans to be obsessed with a few incidents of infectious Ebola while gun violence is unchecked. There's been a national call out for infectious diseases resources to be diverted to preventive efforts, including travel bans from Ebola infected areas of Africa. All the while, our nation's children are dying from the most preventable epidemic of all time. Gun violence is preventable if people insisted on regulating the use of personal weapons made for the purpose of murdering human beings and tax ammunition at a rate higher than legalized marijuana.

Obviously, the world wants to find a cure or effective preventative vaccine to end the Ebola epidemic in Africa. This deadly virus is obviously spreading at a exponentially fast rate, with high associated mortality.  

Gun violence is also spreading.  

Of course, we know the causes of gun violence are uncontrolled access to weapons and ammunition.  We also know the effect of gun violence - it's premature deaths, as well as emotional and physical disabilities related to the wounds of the survivors. Likewise, we also know how to cure the epidemic of gun violence.    
Nevertheless, Americans are obsessed with preventing Ebola from spreading after three Americans, two nurses and a physician, have become infected in recent weeks.  

It's simply unexplained. How is it Americans can ignore a cure for gun violence but demand for extraordinary resources to be showered on the prevention of a few incidents of Ebola? 

Hopefully, our nation will eventually come up with a cure for both.