The country has been so consumed by COVID that we forgot for a while that we have another public health crisis plaguing us: gun violence. The memory lapse was easy, because while we were all staying home in quarantine, mass shootings came to a halt.
But now, with Atlanta and Boulder, it appears they've started back up again. Plus all those everyday killings, which never stopped and which rarely make the news beyond the police blotter, are still cranking along, we're sorry to say.
So this photo from a story in The Washington Post makes us sick. As in, hack-up-a-hairball sick. This is a father and son in South Carolina a few years back. The kid grew up in a house with guns. The kid has been dead since 2014. On his 11th birthday, he took his father's revolver out of the family gun safe and shot himself in the head. He was able to do it because the key was left sitting right on top of the safe.
This family has learned the hard way that guns in the house make things more dangerous, not less. Children find them and kill other people or themselves. Abusive husbands murder their wives. Arguments escalate into fatalities. The key word is "opportunity." A gun in the house is an opportunity for tragedy to happen.
Congress needs to pass background checks, yes — and renew the ban on assault weapons, absolutely. But it would also be super-great if Congress would also once again allow the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to study gun violence and determine which gun safety measures work best, and how families like this kid's can keep their lives from getting ruined. With the NRA bankrupt and in tatters, isn't that at least possible?
In the meantime, it would also be nice if America could stop its love affair with guns. What will it take? Publishing the crime-scene photos from Sandy Hook? We cats HISS.
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