We have the same conversation about guns and public safety after every mass shooting in this country.
Each time, the conversation also gets hijacked – muddled with incorrect perceptions that anyone talking about gun standards must be talking about taking our guns away. We must get past the red herrings in this and begin to talk long enough to make this distinction: Guns in the woods and fields of our hunting lands are very different from guns in our neighborhoods, in our parks, in our strip centers, theaters, restaurants, bars, offices – even churches. Secondly, we must recognize that standards for legal gun ownership should correlate with the risk an owner or would-be owner presents.
In 2015 alone, our rhetorical gun conversations started more than 200 times, according shootingtracker.com (operated by a group named Guns Are Cool that clearly likes guns but just as clearly doesn’t like the National Rifle Association).
More than 200 times in six months! That is, on average, a mass shooting every day. Six were in Tennessee. Two were in Chattanooga – most recently on July 16 when a man the FBI has labeled a “homegrown extremist” fired on two military facilities here. Shootingtracker.com defines a mass shooting as one in which four or more people are shot. The other Chattanooga shooting was in January when a 17-year-old reportedly shot four people on West Main Street, killing one.
This brings us to the nation’s newest mass shooting story.