Here We Go Again

17 children are dead because the state failed to protect them.  This isn’t about “assault weapons,” the NRA, or Donald Trump.  This situation is a grim litany of apathy, ineptitude, and ultimately cowardice.

The FBI was explicitly warned.  They never acted.  The Broward County Sheriff’s department was called to the shooter’s home 39 times but never saw fit to take action.  The deputy charged with protecting the school hid from the shooter.  The first officers to respond to the scene chose not to intervene.

So, we should launch immediate and urgent inquiries into this situation, right?  Wrong.  Instead, we’re told by politicians and the media that the solution is to ban the tools the shooter used.  That’s how little sense we make as a society.

It’s a morbid bit of irony that Sheriff Scott Israel, whose department investigated the shooter’s home more than 3 dozen times and whose deputies showed cowardice throughout the shooting, is leading the charge to advocate for gun control.

By now, you’ve no doubt heard the shrill emotional appeals from gun-control advocates, from CNN, and of course, from the survivors of the shooting who are being used as unwitting sock puppets.  Classmates and friends of the victims were bused to the Florida legislature to demand a ban on AR-15 rifles and were then crestfallen when they found out our system of government doesn’t change laws in a day.  The cameras, of course, were on hand to document those students’ dismay.  That dismay, of course, was channeled to guilt Americans into accepting a legislative “solution” that will change nothing.

This isn’t about “assault weapons.”  The AR-15 rifle has been in civilian circulation since 1964.  Nothing has happened in the last five decades to make it more lethal.  The problem is us.

And that’s a complex issue that won’t be solved by banning a type of weapon or requiring more background checks.  Those measures (all of which predate this shooting by years) are easy, craven, and worthless panaceas meant make a politician look virtuous on camera and nothing more.

In reality, the real work of fixing this situation isn’t going to make for easy soundbites.  We need to look at our abhorrent parenting skills.  We need to ask why we’re overmedicating our children into zombies.  We need to demand answers from our government about failures in law enforcement.

I’d like to see that happen, but I’ve no illusions.  The response to this will be the same as the responses to Newtown, Virginina Tech, and all other such tragedies.  There will be mudslinging from one politician to another, all gleefully steered by the media, and nothing will change.  Some gun bill or another will fail to pass, gun-control advocates will claim the NRA has some stranglehold over Capitol Hill, and we can settle in to wait for this to happen again.

Meanwhile, nobody stops to ask why our society keeps creating monsters, and the cycle continues.