The Most Sensible Reactions to Parkland Shooting

From Esquire

The scene in Parkland, Florida, Wednesday was horrifying, but not unfamiliar: children running frantically from their school as heavily armed police looked on. Even from the vantage point of a helicopter camera, it was clear some were in tears. Others seemed to stumble for yards at a time, leaning on someone to avoid collapsing on the grass where they might normally stand, toting their book bags, chatting with friends. Afterwards, some gave interviews. One teenager described how, after police liberated him from the makeshift bunker he and his classmates had made out of a classroom, he was escorted past the bodies of five human beings who lay lifeless on the floor of his school hallway. He said he saw bullets in some of their heads, despite the white sheets that had been draped over them.

The Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Broward County was, according to the Gun Violence Archive, the site of the 30th mass shooting of the year, on the 45th day. We have developed a routine now. We learn that the shooter had a long history of troubling behavior; that he was a male loner; that there were heroes in the chaos and the carnage, like the football coach who dove in front of the bullets to save the children in his care; and that 17 more Americans are dead, their bodies torn apart in seconds by the insanely powerful weaponry to which a teenage boy had easy access. In the case of Nicolas Cruz, it was an AR-15 - a weapon nearly indistinguishable from those used by the American military, and which increasingly seems to be the weapon of choice for mass murderers. It is also highly customizable and fun to use, so gun enthusiasts find all of this a fair trade-off.

Immediately, we begin to assess the carnage with a kind of bloodless, forensic care. Where does this shooting rank among all the others? Where does Nikolas Cruz sit on the leaderboard? This is, of course, exactly what he wanted, and exactly what the next murderer will seek. There is ample research to show that each shooting, and the frenzy of attention it generates, serves as inspiration to future shooters. The next Nikolas Cruz will acquire a weapon of war just as easily, even if those who know him are fully aware of the danger he poses and warn authorities. After all, Cruz's parents could have called the cops every day about their son, but they likely would have been powerless to seize his weapons. In fact, Cruz was known to authorities.

And then it's time to tally The Reactions. Invariably, we must start with the president, who elected not to speak publicly, but to tweet:

Notice there is no suggestion of a policy change, nor any attempt to modify the way our society is constructed in order to prevent this happening again. The same goes for every coward masquerading as a political leader in this country who takes money and marching orders from the NRA. That includes Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida. 17 of his constituents were murdered yesterday.

Rubio is a good representation of our Republican elected officials, who are so bought-and-paid-for by the gun lobby that they have for decades blocked the Centers for Disease Control from studying gun violence as a public health issue. Nearly 2,000 Americans have been killed by firearms so far this year. Over 15,500 died last year.

The more sensible and constructive reactions can be found in other corners. Like, say from an NBA coach, the Golden State Warriors' Steve Kerr:

He is exactly right. Clearly, for our elected officials, dead children are the price of freedom - or at least winning a Republican primary. Even some of the teenagers who survived the shooting yesterday had better ideas when they got on CNN:

Meanwhile, a teacher at the school described how no amount of preparation can spare a school or community in the event an individual wants to commit mass murder. We know this because Stoneman had done exhaustive active shooter drills:

But perhaps the most striking reaction came from CNN's Philip Mudd, a counterterrorism analyst. Mudd spent decades at the CIA and the FBI working in hostile foreign lands, but what happened in Florida yesterday was too much for him to bear:

The simple fact is that the United States has less than five percent of the world's population, but half of all civilian-owned guns. There are nearly 89 guns for every 100 residents. And the rate of homicide by firearm in America is astronomically higher than any other developed nation. We have six times the gun homicide rate of Canada, and 16 times that of Germany. Countries with more guns have more gun deaths. States with more guns have more gun deaths. We have the most guns, the laxest laws, and the most deaths. We can change that, or we can continue to tally the bodies.

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