Four More Children Dead, and a Nation Shrugs

According to the Giffords Law Center, more than half of all gun owners store at least one gun unsafely without any locks or other safe storage measures. And nearly a quarter of all gun owners have reported storing all their guns in an unlocked location in their homes.

That lax security is fueling both an epidemic of gun thefts and the tragic shattering of lives that comes from unintentional shootings, deaths by suicide, and school shootings. According to the Giffords Law Center, between 70 percent and 90 percent of all guns used in those tragic circumstances “are acquired from the home or the homes of relatives or friends.”

Despite legislative resistance to such common sense gun safety laws as requiring gun owners to report lost and stolen weapons, the imposition of universal background checks, or mandated safe storage practices, polling shows public support for them.

53 percent of Americans said they favor stricter gun laws, according to the Pew Research Center, with broad partisan agreement on such policies as preventing those with mental illness from purchasing a gun. Majorities in both parties also oppose allowing people to carry concealed firearms without a permit, according to Pew.

In Michigan this week, the young people impacted by these shootings said they’d grown tired of the “thoughts and prayers” inevitably offered in the wake of the tragedies, and expected real action from policymakers.

“We don’t have a moment to wait for action,” Megan Dombrowski, a Wayne State University political science student who founder a campus chapter of the anti-gun violence group Students Demand Action, told the Michigan Advance.

These moments for action have come and gone after every mass shooting, from Parkland and Sandy Hook to Pulse and Virginia Tech, America has grown appallingly numb to the needless and avoidable deaths of its young people

Lawmakers who refuse to act should be required to personally explain their inaction to the families of the dead. It is hard to see any other way for that cold-hearted resistance to crumble.

An award-winning political journalist, John L. Micek is Editor-in-Chief of The Pennsylvania Capital-Star in Harrisburg, Pa. Email him at jmicek@penncapital-star.com and follow him on Twitter @ByJohnLMicek.