On December 14, 2012 we started to get reports into our newsroom that there was a shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut. First reports were unclear about how many people were shot. Newtown was close enough to Philadelphia for us to send a reporter and camera crew if this was developing into a mass shooting. One of our reporters who had worked in Hartford was on vacation near the school. She called me and asked if we knew about the shooting. I told her we did, but we’re waiting for more information about how bad it was. She said she would see what see could find out and call back. She called back shortly and said she talked with an old police contact. He told her, “It’s bad.” As we all know, it was very bad. Twenty children between six and seven years old and six adult staff members were slaughtered by a 20 year man with severe mental health problems who killed his mother before leaving home to attack the school. Like so many of the mass shooters, he also shot himself. A report by the state office of the Child Advocate said Adam Lanza’s “severe and deteriorating internalized mental health problems…combined with an atypical preoccupation with violence…(and) access to deadly weapons…proved a recipe for mass murder.”
Connecticut and several other states passed new laws to support universal background checks, ban high capacity magazines and certain types of assault weapons. Ten states passed laws to relax gun restrictions. The bipartisan Manchin-Toomey Assault Weapons Ban of 2013 which would have also expanded background checks on gun purchases were both defeated in the US Senate. The murder of twenty children and six adults just wasn’t enough to outlaw weapons that have the sole purpose of killing humans. We’ve grown to accept mass shootings by people who should never have a gun as part of our daily lives. This morning we woke up to another mass shooting at a FedEx facility near the Indianapolis airport. At least eight dead, four wounded and the shooter killed himself. Sound familiar? Since Sandy Hook, there have been mass shootings in schools, churches, movie theaters, supermarkets, workplaces, nightclubs, and private homes. So we’re all potential victims.
In case you’re wondering, the Gun Violence Archive defines a mass shooting as one when four or more people are wounded or killed, including the shooter. There were six hundred in 2020 compared to four hundred seventeen in 2019. Everytown for Gun Safety reports that thirty-nine percent of gun owners have no gun training. But we have to pass a test to get a driver’s license. The Founding Fathers couldn’t see that far into the future, but they were sure everyone would need a gun and they would be able to figure out how to use it. Of course, times were different in 1791 when the Second Amendment was passed. One of the reasons it was passed was to prevent the need for a standing professional army. Over the years there have been some restrictions on the ability to buy a gun. Guns have become more powerful and it’s just too easy for anyone to buy a gun legally or illegally.
We as a society have to accept the responsibility for the American obsession with guns as we continue to elect people who won’t see the obvious, that we no longer live in 1791. Over the next few days, we will learn more about the FedEx shooter and his motives. We will learn about the victims and the heartbreaking pain of their families. We will hear the rhetoric from both sides about restrictions and rights. We can also be sure we will wake up again to news of another mass shooting somewhere in America for which we can only blame ourselves. We have become numb to the frequency of the horror. The right to bear arms has consequences.
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