Krauthammer: The Cycle Of Gun Talk

Charles Krauthammer looks at the "cycle of gun talk" in his column, which appears in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

There's the cycle of poverty. There's the cycle of violence. And then there's the cycle of gun talk. It starts with a mass shooting. Gun-control advocates blame the deaths on gun-control opponents, who argue, in turn, that none of the proposed restrictions would have had any effect on the incident in question. The debate goes nowhere. The media move on.Until the next incident, when the cycle begins again.

So with the Roseburg massacre in Oregon. Within hours, President Obama takes to the microphones to furiously denounce the National Rifle Association and its ilk for resisting "commonsense gun-safety laws." His harangue is totally sincere, totally knee-jerk, and totally pointless. At the time he delivers it, he - and we - know practically nothing about the shooter, nothing about the weapons, nothing about how they were obtained.

Nor does Obama propose any legislation. He knows none would pass. But the deeper truth is that it would have made no difference. Does anyone really believe that the (alleged) gun-show loophole had anything to do with Roseburg? Universal background checks sound wonderful. But Oregon already has them. The Roseburg shooter and his mother obtained every one of their guns legally.

...Nor did he seriously address the other approach that could make a difference: more aggressive psychiatric intervention. These massacres are almost invariably perpetrated by severely disturbed, isolated, often delusional young men.

Yet even here, our reach is limited. In some cases, yes, involuntary commitment would have made a difference. Jared Loughner, the Tucson shooter, was so unstable, so menacing, that fellow students at his community college feared, said one, that he would "come into class with an automatic weapon." Under our crazy laws, however, he had to kill before he could be locked up.

You can read the rest of the column via the below link:

http://www.philly.com/philly/columnists/20151012_The_cycle_of_gun_talk.html