We don't yet know to what extent ethnicity or religion played in why 14 people were shot dead in a California social services building on Wednesday but in a way, it doesn't really matter. If we did not focus on this massacre as a way of looking at America's gun laws, we could have looked at another mass shooting on the same day in Georgia, which left four people dead, or any of the previous 353 similar incidents in the US this year that involved four or more deaths. On a purely statistical basis, by the time you read this, there is likely to have already been another shooting.
None of this is in any way new or unexpected. A few of the details might change and the level of horror might vary but there is something depressingly mundane about the announcement of another mass killing in the US. As president Barack Obama noted after a student shot 12 people dead at Umpqua Community College in Oregon on October 1 – nearly 60 mass shootings ago – this level of comfortable familiarity must change. Mr Obama expressed a similar view on Wednesday.
But slowly, it seems that the US’s uniquely lax approach to gun controls might finally be changing. Mr Obama’s recent raising of the issue is a factor in that. As he noted, most gun owners favour common-sense laws such as background checks. Another sign is the front-page reaction of the New York Daily News. Citing the swath of the Republican presidential candidates offering their prayers instead of gun law reforms, the headline said: “God isn’t fixing this.”
There is, of course, constitutional protection for gun ownership in the US, although the context of doing so as part of “a well regulated militia” is rarely mentioned. A more important factor is the powerful and well-organised gun lobby, which wields disproportionate electoral sway. But just as the similarly powerful tobacco lobby found – and as the Israel lobby is finding now – people power eventually prevails. That will require millions of ordinary Americans to stand up and say: “No more.” The only positive that might come of this latest shooting is if it has brought that moment closer.
