Perspectives On Gun Violence: Mass Shootings Are Not ‘Inevitable’; It Is ‘A Mental Health Issue’
In response to the weekend's mass shooting in a small town in Texas, opinion writers offer their ideas on why gun violence continues to plague the United States.
The New York Times:
Mass Shootings Don’t Have To Be Inevitable
There is an agonizing predictability to the mass shootings that regularly horrify the nation. The latest, in which 26 churchgoers were shot to death at Sunday worship in Texas, offered all the most cruel and terrifying characteristics. It was carried out by a disturbed individual with easy access to assault weapons adapted from military warfare and marketed in the spurious name of sportsmanship. (11/6)
USA Today:
Trump’s Right, This Is A Mental Health Issue
President Trump’s suggestion that the tragedy in Texas is a mental health issue rather than a gun issue deserves more than an arrogant dismissal by gun control proponents. There are roughly 90 million gun owners in the U.S. who responsibly own firearms of all kinds. They didn’t harm anybody on Sunday, and indeed one of those citizens courageously grabbed his own rifle and opened fire on the killer, causing him to drop his rifle and flee the scene. We have tried numerous restrictive gun control measures, and none has lived up to sales pitches about preventing violence. (Alan M. Gottlieb, 11/6)
USA Today:
After Texas Shooting, Trump And Politicians Show How Mental They Are
Americans may someday look back in shame at a time when their country was awash in guns, when every few weeks people were slaughtered en masse and when society repeatedly mourned its dead, even as it facilitated their murder with easy access to powerful weapons. ... As shocking as the killings are, equally shocking is that the nation’s political leaders do nothing to stop them. Now, these leaders even want to deny that gun violence has anything to do with … guns. (11/6)
The Washington Post:
Yes, President Trump, It’s A Guns Situation
"You never expect something like this,” said one official about Sunday’s mass shooting in the small Texas community of Sutherland Springs. “Unimaginable,” said a man whose parents were among the 26 people killed, along with a pregnant woman, an 18-month-old baby and a 14-year-old girl. Among the awful truths of what happened Sunday morning in a place where no one locks their doors is that gun violence is not unimaginable anywhere in this country. Mass shootings have become commonplace, and shootings far more so: Guns kill more than 30,000 people every year and injure roughly 80,000 more. Just as there was a last time (an outdoor musical festival a little more than a month ago in Las Vegas) and a this time (a rural Texas church), there will surely be a next time unless national lawmakers come to grips with the problem and take meaningful steps to stem the obscene and unfettered access to weapons of war. (11/6)
