A year ago tomorrow Nikolas Cruz entered Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL. It didn't take him long to perpetrate a St. Valentine's Day Massacre which dwarfed the original one in Chicago 88 years before.
Time and body counts aren't the only differences between the two events. Up in Chicago it was a case of one bunch of mobsters hitting another. Seven members of the town's North Side Gang were gunned down in a garage by four guys, two of them dressed as cops. The weapons of choice were Thompson sub machine guns. There were a lot of rumors regarding the shooter's identities, but ultimately no one was ever charged. That includes Al Capone who is widely believed to have paid for the job, but was warm and happy in Miami the day it happened.
Here in the 21st century we don't call such barbarity a, "massacre," any more. The preferred term these days is, "mass shooting."
Whatever we call them, they're a lot more common than they used to be and they are rarely pulled off by gangsters.
No, Nikolas Cruz is a lot of things, including bat shit crazy, but he wasn't then and isn't now a member of any organized gang. He's just another good ol' American born kid.
The weapon he used, despite his lengthy history of mental health issues, was legally purchased at a Florida gun shop a year before the rampage. Unlike Al's boys, he didn't have to steal it from some military armory, or buy it on the black market.
He gave that gift to himself--it was, what else, an AR-15--four years after psychiatrists recommended he be involuntarily committed to a residential treatment center, It was one year after a school resources official also advised he should be locked away involuntarily under what is known as the Baker Act. Wikipedia reports two school counselors agreed with the assessment, but an unnamed mental institute didn't. It was also a year after an anonymous caller to a local police tip line claimed Cruz had threatened to shoot up the school.
The somewhat tepid response by Florida legislators to the attack was first to defeat a measure which would have banned the sale of semi-automatic, military style weapons in the state outright. Instead, they, among some other things, raised the age to purchase such guns from 18 to 21 and threw in a three day waiting period for the sale to go through.
The same day the new law was enacted the NRA sued the state, saying such a restriction violated the rights of people ages 18 to 20 because they are considered adults by the constitution. As far as it is known, no one has thought to bring up the fact you have to be 21 in this country buy a bottle of beer. That's right, it would seem in the minds of many beer is far more lethal than semi-automatic weapons.
And don't say the difference is that gun ownership is in the constitution, but alcohol isn't. Actually it is twice. The first time is when the nation, as a whole, went a little nuts and banned it nationwide--leading directly to the first St. Valentine's Day massacre. Then it is again in the XXI amendment which lifted the ban, making it legal for adults to buy and consume alcohol in most states. Indeed, downing a Budweiser is just as much a constitutional right as owning a gun, yet you have be 21 to legally buy it everywhere.
All of which leads to a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll. It found 69% of Americans want either strong, or moderate restrictions on firearms. 55% said they want to make it tougher to own guns. At the same time only 14% of those same people said they were, "very confident," their elected officials understood their views on guns. A mere 8% said they were, "very confident," their representatives would do something about the issue of gun control.
Reuters reports NRA fundraising has taken a dip in the last two years, however much of it is because the gun crowd has Donald John Trump in the White House. They know he is on their side, so why bother? The news agency quotes NRA spokeswoman, Jennifer Baker as saying, "There's less to do because we've been so successful over the years. We continue to defeat gun control legislation across the country while passing gun rights legislation."
Yes, and kids and teachers, like those 17 murder victims at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, continue to die and crazed psychos still walk into stores and legally buy what amounts to weapons of mass destruction.
Hey, who needs Al Capone when you have guys like Nikolas Cruz roaming the streets and the NRA fouling the body politic?
2-13-19
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