Action is needed to stem gun violence

When President Franklin D. Roosevelt pushed passage of the National Firearms Act of 1934, it was understood that the gangsters making headlines with their murderous use of Thompson submachine guns weren’t about to lay them down. 

As debate swirled over the bill, which banned sawed-off shotguns and made a license for fully automatic weapons hard to get and punishingly expensive, Pretty Boy Floyd was on a killing spree. John Dillinger had just won a shootout with cops in Minnesota, and Bonnie and Clyde were machine-gunning their way through the nation’s midsection.

The National Rifle Association supported the restrictions, and the Supreme Court upheld them.

Nine decades later, this history helps us understand that national consensus about limiting ownership of certain weapons is achievable.

Yet President Joe Biden’s plea Thursday evening for a federal ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines has little chance of being answered. His cries of "Enough, enough" were moving, but the bills House Democrats are introducing are more about putting Republicans on the record than pulling guns from shelves or homes.

Too little of what’s being proposed in Washington is likely to pass in the Senate. Yet, a bipartisan set of senators is huddled into three working groups for negotiations, which is something. One is looking at funding mental health services and school security. Another is focused on expanding background checks. The third is exploring incentivizing state red-flag laws, to keep weapons from people deemed a threat.

In New York, lawmakers approved and Gov. Kathy Hochul is ready to sign several new laws. One, raising the age for purchasing and possessing semi-automatic rifles to 21 and adding more time to the purchase process, makes sense. If 20 is too young to drink, use marijuana or gamble, it’s too young to buy AR-15s. Another looks to strengthen red-flag laws that could have been used to stop accused Buffalo shooter Payton Gendron from buying his weapons, but weren’t. A law demanding that firing pins microstamp bullets so they can be matched to weapons has made sense for a long time.

These steps can help. They are what we can do.

Another change, banning the purchase of bulletproof clothing for civilians except in the case of certain professions to be determined by the Department of State, is complicated and worthy of debate. If lacking Kevlar stops a school shooter who drops his plan because he can’t shake the image of getting killed, that’s worthy. But a banned purchase could mean a user with no motive other than self-protection could be a victim. Perhaps body armor, too, is best handled with red-flag laws and an age limit.

Those Tommy guns, banned in 1934, fired 600 rounds a minute. Now they are almost never used in street crimes or mass murders. The ban, over time, destroyed the civilian machine-gun market. They are not often sought, nor freely advertised or marketed. And while mass murderers could buy kits to make AR-15s fully automatic, they mostly don’t.

If they did, recent death tolls could be far higher.

LAWS CAN HELP

Gun laws can help curb gun deaths, even if it’s only a little, even if it takes a long time, even if it seems unlikely now. They are one way to try to limit the ability of killers to commit mass murder, in a nation where 400 million guns are circulating and another 11 million are sold annually.

Such regulations must coincide with another enormous challenge — identifying what is creating this desire to massacre, stopping it, and finding and treating those stunted by it.

The laws passed in Albany this week and under discussion in Congress are aimed at the disturbed young men who shoot up schools and other public places.

Even as the nation was mourning the dead of Buffalo and Uvalde on Wednesday, a gunman seeking more pain medication after a surgery killed four in a hospital in Tulsa, including two physicians. Closer to home, an 18-year-old Westbury High School student who threatened in a tweet “Ima shoot everybody in that school” was arrested Wednesday and a red-flag review was ordered. An anonymous social media threat directed at Uniondale's Turtle Hook Middle School spurred fear. A recent threat by a 16-year-old Bellport High School student of a “mass shooting” had that community on edge. Westhampton Beach Middle School and Riverhead High School had similar incidents last week.

To many, the initiatives being pursued by state and federal officials are not enough. To others, they are overreach that impedes the law-abiding without slowing criminals and killers.

To us, they are a start. To this start, we must add real action on mental health. We must add real discussions about dangerous immersion in the culture of violent video games. We must address the effects of social media, and discuss sensible ways to make it tougher to carry out mass murders, by increasing security and hardening targets.

We have to do what we can do. That it is not enough is a sorrow, but cannot be an excuse.