Lone Wolf Massacres: The New Normal

So here we are, another massacre by a single gunman, another “lone wolf,” the biggest yet.  Here in Orlando we have barely come to terms with the Pulse Nightclub shootings a year ago, and we wake up to another mass killing.  Another single person-not an army but a “lone wolf” with advanced weaponry-kills dozens, wounds hundreds more, and nothing can be done except to keep the dead and wounded in our thoughts and prayers and lower flags to half-staff. Everything the shooter did was perfectly legal, right up to the moment he began shooting randomly.

We are a problem-solving people.  When something bad happens, we look for solutions and fixes. But mass shootings are a problem we haven’t solved. Some people even argue that there can be no solution, no fix to this. We are going to have to live with massacres forever-at schools like Sandy Hook, in nightclubs like Pulse, in movie theatres like the Century 16 in Aurora, Colorado, and in open-air concerts like Route 91 Harvest in Las Vegas. Forever.

Why should we permit this? What about our problem solvers? Our legislators? We can expect our current members in Congress to offer their thoughts and prayers and nothing else. They will do nothing.  Even when they themselves became the targets of a recent mass shooting, they did nothing.  The president will lower the flags to half-mast for a while, just as we did for Pulse and Sandy Hook.  We will bury the dead after proper prayers and hymns and continue living until the next massacre.

Gun control has been the third rail for our legislators for a decade. You can’t talk about it without gun owners shouting you down. I don't dispute the right of people to own guns to defend themselves. Own one, if you need to. Belong to a gun club, go shooting, if that's your hobby. But this whole culture that’s advocating open carry, carrying weapons into schools, carrying them into public parks and other public spaces, a culture that advocates easy and cheap access to methods for turning semiautomatic weapons into automatic weapons, owning weapons that fire high-velocity bullets that penetrate the bullet-proof vests that police wear, and cause significant wounds to whomever they strike, this culture of death, is a nightmare.

We've gone too far creating a murderous freedom for any single “lone wolf” who decides he wants to kill many people at once. It’s easy and it’s quick and it’s simple.

Don't politicize this issue, I’m told. But it is the previous politics which made this situation of recurring massacres possible. The NRA and other pro-gun groups relentlessly lobbied and continue to lobby each state legislature and our Congress for more liberal gun ownership and carry policies. And the lobbying works-a candidate for the US Senate lofts a pistol at a political rally to prove his loyalty. Make it easier, the lobbyists urge, to buy weapons, buy big weapon clips, buy semi-automatic weapons originally created for military use.

And they’re not done yet. In Congress now, the NRA is pushing a bill to carry guns across state lines and another bill to make it legal and easy to buy silencers. If these pass, we will be able die in silence, unaware that we are being shot until the bullet strikes.

We must honor our dead and wounded. To honor the victims of this week’s massacre, the White House called for a moment of silence yesterday.  But will that silence be enough, or can we have a conversation about the kind of weapons we ought to be buying and selling for hunting and defense in this country? Our continued silence on gun control is not going to save a single life-silence just ensures that the deaths will go on. Lone wolf massacres are the new normal. Unless we begin to speak.