A tried-and-true solution to shootings. Are we smart enough to learn?

When it comes to shootings, mass or otherwise, America is an outlier among first-world nations.

The U.S. has 3.96 deaths from gun violence per 100,000 people in 2019. That was more than eight times as high as the rate in Canada, which had 0.47 deaths per 100,000 people — and nearly 100 times higher than in the United Kingdom, which had 0.04 deaths per 100,000.

The numbers come from a massive database maintained by the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, which tracks lives lost in every country, in every year, by every possible cause of death.

Here are some Republican ideas for stopping the slaughter

Arming teachers.

Limiting access to school buildings to a single locked door.

Expanding research into school violence.

Creating a federal task force to recommend how communities can make schools safe. Improving mental health care. 

Republicans have offered up seemingly every potential solution to stop mass gun violence except restricting access to the weapons themselves.

Here’s a classic:

“What about getting a department that’s looking at young men that’s looking at women that’s looking at their social media?”

That brilliant comment came from the choice of Republican voters and Donald Trump to be a Senator from Georgia, Herschel Walker, in a Fox News interview. 

Walker’s ex-wife said he had pointed a gun at her head, and “talked about having a shoot-out with police.” His own therapist said, “He threatened to kill her, myself, and himself. I called 911, and the police came.”

Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick touted his state’s existing program that allows teachers to be armed, which did not prevent the massacre and called for more security around schools.

Republicans are open to legislation that would “harden” school buildings to make them more difficult to attack, although Democrats have criticized the idea of making campuses into jail-like fortresses.

YOUR CHILDREN’S SCHOOL IF GOVERNOR DAN PATRICK RULES

Why is the United States so unusual in the number of gun-related deaths, and why are Republicans making such strange, impossible suggestions to “cure” the problem?

The answer, which every honest person knows, is quite obvious: America is unique. It has way too many guns and way too many people carrying them. That is the problem.

The symptom of that problem is too many gun deaths. Mass murders, individual murders, suicides, crimes involving guns, woundings — way too many.

Attempts to solve a problem by addressing a symptom cannot work. To solve a problem we must address the problem.

The politicians and their voters who claim that “guns don’t kill; people kill” are liars; they know they are liars, and they’ll keep lying until enough voters stand up to them.

Guns are meant for shooting. When masses of people carry guns, masses of people will be shot. Period. 

The problem begins with the Supreme Court Justices who claimed the 2nd Amendment really says, “Any damn fool can have a gun of any kind, and wave it around like the damn fool he is” — well those Justice were liars too.

The first 13 words of the 2nd Amendment are: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State . . . The lying Justices, who claim they are “originalists” (people who obey how something would have been understood or was intended to be understood at the time it was written) — those right-wing Justices are damn liars, if they totally ignore those first 13 words.

Where is the Militia? Where is the “well-regulation”? 

And then there’s, “. . .  the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

As for the “arms,” are they swords and flintlock pistols? Are they automatic rifles? Are they hand grenades, flame throwers? Or are “arms” something like this:

Question for the Supreme Court: Should every American be allowed to own and carry AA12s? If not, why not? They are today’s “arms.”

Then there is the question of which “people”? Two-year-olds are people. Criminals are people. All those in jails and prisons are people? Aliens are people. Witnesses testifying in court are people. Should they all be allowed to pack guns? If not, why not?

Back in the 1700s,  anyone of any age could carry a gun. Is that what the phony “originalists” now want in the 2000s?

Or should we merely wait for the next shooting, then offer our “thoughts and prayers”? 

If so, you don’t have long to wait. Mass shootings in the United States are far more common than you have imagined:

U.S. marks Memorial Day weekend with at least 12 mass shootings

Since the Uvalde, Tex., elementary school tragedy, there have been at least 15 other shootings that had at least four victims By Annabelle Timsit Updated May 31, 2022

But mass shootings have already happened again — and again. At least 15 mass shootings have taken place across the United States since Tuesday, from California to Arizona to Tennessee.