On Sunday, we encountered a literal sign of the times. At the entrance of the 5th Avenue Theater in Seattle (at a performance of The Sound of Music), there was one reading "No firearms." How did we reach the point at which more-or-less-peaceful Seattleites would need to be reminded not to pack a gun into a theater, one which counted many children in its audience?
It’s sadly true that mass shootings have become common; some have political or cultural motivation, but some merely reflect anger and real or imagined slights. They can’t be dismissed, as the NRA would do, as the acts of a few mentally disturbed people. All of them manifest the gun culture: easy access, irresponsible use.
President Obama issues an anguished response to each of the more notorious incidents, but his comments have no effect other than to prompt the usual inane complaint that he is playing politics, as if there were no political issue here. Republican leaders, even when not advocating looser gun laws, adamantly refuse to consider tougher ones because the NRA would denounce them. In addition, they seem to think, what’s the big deal about a few more gun-related deaths? As Jeb Bush put it in response to the shooting at Umpqua College, "stuff happens."
Leaving mass shootings aside, perhaps the bottom was reached as to the use of a gun to express anger — in this case at a mere inconvenience — in a Biloxi, Mississippi, Waffle House, where a waitress was shot and killed by a customer who objected to being told not to smoke in the restaurant.
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