And so it happens again: another gun-related atrocity in America, this time in Charleston. But after the events of Columbine, Aurora, Newtown and West Baltimore, and Chicago, and town after city after town, are we really shocked?
The American way of allowing virtually free access to guns is utter lunacy. In no other democratic society in the world is there anywhere near the unconscionable level of deadly violence that we continue to allow to happen on a daily basis in this country — violence made deadly because the act is committed with a gun.
To the call for more gun controls after yet another incident of mass gun murder, stay tuned for the inevitable responses by the gun-rights advocates. First, they will trot out that old favorite: "Guns don't kill people, bad people kill people, so put the criminals in prison." Yet, if that's so, how come there is so much deadly violence in a country with the highest percentage of its population incarcerated in the developed world and yet such a tiny percentage of murders in this country are committed at the hands of a bad person's fists? Next, the gun rights apologists will subtly blame the victims, as is already happening with some commentators claiming that "if the Charleston victims had guns, they could have defended themselves." Really, the gun-rights zealots want everyone to take guns to a CHURCH PRAYER SERVICE?! That goes along with the calls for teachers to be encouraged to bring guns to schools and patrons to bring guns to bars. And, don't forget, the NRA wants as many open carry laws as possible. Just what we need: more guns — guns everywhere in this country already predisposed to violent behavior.
And let's not forget that these mass gun murders are only a small percentage of the annual gun-related violence in the United States. Let's not forget the daily toll of murders by guns, domestic violence by guns and suicides by guns in city after city, now so commonplace they rarely get a mention greater than a paragraph in the local paper.
If recent history holds, this most recent act of violent depravity will lead to tepid calls for "sensible" gun control measures: better gun show restrictions, improved background checks at gun stores, tougher controls on "straw man" purchases and limits on the number of guns one can buy each month. Although some of these policies have reduced gun-related crime in places that have enacted them in certain areas of the country, the effects have not been anything near game-changing. Rather, one would hope that this most recent tragedy would lead to widespread, bipartisan calls to ban the sale of all automatic weapons and handguns and virtually every other type of gun (except maybe rifles for hunting or whatever you use for that activity). However, I am not naïve. If that wasn't accomplished after the murder of over 20 little children and their teachers at Newtown, or after the murder of more than a dozen students and their teachers at Columbine, or after the murder of a dozen people simply watching a movie in Aurora, or after the murder of five little girls in rural Pennsylvania, or after more than 200 gun-related murders in Baltimore, or thousands of gun-related murders and suicides across the country each year, I am sadly confident that it will not happen after this despicable crime as well.
So America, what now? Will we collectively say "enough is enough," and come together in communities all across the country, in red states and blue states, and elect principled leaders who will stop groveling to the cynical gun lobby and start protecting our citizens from the level of violence to which we have sadly grown accustomed? Or will we allow our history of senseless violence to continue to repeat itself?
Dr. Peter Beilenson is CEO of Evergreen Health and a former Baltimore City health commissioner and Howard County health officer. His email is pbeilenson@verizon.net.