Collins: Guns - when Trump can't even tweet

Yellow tags mark where bullet casings found at one of the scenes of a shooting spree at Rancho Tehama Reserve, near Corning, Calif., Tuesday, Nov. 14, 2017. Law enforcement says that five people, including the shooter were killed, and several people including some children were injured during the shooting spree that occurred at multiple locations. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)
Yellow tags mark where bullet casings found at one of the scenes of a shooting spree at Rancho Tehama Reserve, near Corning, Calif., Tuesday, Nov. 14, 2017. Law enforcement says that five people, including the shooter were killed, and several people including some children were injured during the shooting spree that occurred at multiple locations. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)

I don't know if you heard, but this week a boy with a handgun killed two of his fellow students at a high school in Kentucky.

"It is unbelievable that this would happen in a small, close-knit community like Marshall County," said the governor, Matt Bevin.

Actually, that part is completely believable. Given that another school shooting this week was in Italy, Texas, population under 2,000. And that two months ago, 25 people were shot to death while attending church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, population 362.

It's about guns, not population density. And it is a huge story. But I know, people, you have been beating your heads against the wall about this issue forever, and a certain numbness creeps in.

Donald Trump - who yelled about "carnage" in big cities during his inauguration speech - has said not a word about the Kentucky shooting except to tweet his "thoughts and prayers." It is highly unlikely this lack of focus was due to weariness.

"You've got to wonder," Mark Kelly, who co-founded a gun-safety organization with his wife, then-Rep. Gabby Giffords, after she was shot in the head while meeting with her constituents, said in a phone interview, whether the president would have had a more intense reaction if the news reports suggested "the shooter was of a different ethnicity."

True that. During his government-shutdown-immigration rants, Trump kept pointing out that the man who killed eight people with a truck in Manhattan had come to the country through a visa lottery system. That happened Oct. 31. Since that time, 73 people have been killed in mass shootings in this country. But about gun regulation we have not heard a presidential peep.

The unusual thing about that terrible Manhattan tragedy is that it was not committed with a gun. Depending on how you count them, we've had around 30 acts of terrorism since 9/11 that involved multiple deaths. More than half were committed by right-wing extremists. And virtually all of them were gun violence.

So, this is the time when we talk about gun regulation. Come on. Energize.

We are resigned to the fact that there is nothing, no matter how horrific, that will persuade any politician in the thrall of the National Rifle Association to consider even the most modest gun-safety legislation.

A super-modest bill banning bump stocks - the device the Las Vegas killer used to turn the semi-automatic rifles he could buy legally into functional machine guns - was introduced in Congress and then shuffled away. Las Vegas can't ban bump stocks since there's a state law prohibiting municipalities from doing that kind of thing on their own.

Another super-modest bipartisan bill aimed at beefing up the background check system was introduced after the church shooting in Texas, in which the mass murderer never should have been cleared to buy a gun, even under the stupendously lenient U.S. system. And nothing has happened.

Trump's call for action after the Sutherland Springs church shooting was limited to one tweet. ("May God be w/ the people ... The FBI & law enforcement are on the scene.") Nine days later, when a man with a history of mental illness and a semi-automatic rifle crashed through the gates of the tiny four-classroom elementary school in Rancho Tehama, Calif., spraying bullets, there was no mention at all.

Meanwhile, our president is running a re-election campaign ad that announces that "Democrats who stand in our way will be complicit in every murder committed by illegal immigrants." Do you think he feels responsible for the 15,583 gun violence deaths - suicides not included - that occurred during the first year he was president?

The good news - you needed some, right? - is that the gun-safety advocates are not worn out. "Every great social change movement had moments where you had to convince yourself not to give up," Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said.

If they keep at it, someday we'll get a new president who doesn't believe the only answer to mass shootings in public schools is an occasional tweet about thoughts and prayers.

The New York Times

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