Mass murders becoming new normal in America

For the second time in the past week, another mass shooting with mass casualties has left Americans in a state of mass shock, incredulity and anguish.

The nation had barely begun to collect itself from the deadly shootings last Friday at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, Colo., when at least two deranged killers Wednesday opened fire with sophisticated assault weapons at a center for the developmentally disabled in San Bernardino, Calif., slaughtering at least 14 to death and wounding at least 20 others.

The senseless California assault – in which the two shooters later died in a hail of bullets from police – represents the most deadly mass shooting in this country since the butchery at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., three years ago this month. It also represents the 355th mass shooting in the United States this year, a twofold increase over the toll of 2013.

As such, some argue that mass shootings that too often target the most vulnerable and innocent among us have become “the new normal” for our culture, much akin to the Wild West days of yore. They lament that such terrorism and lawlessness have become an unfortunate byproduct of a society in which legitimate gun-carrying rights clash with irresponsible and unstable behaviors. To that line of thinking, we most vociferously disagree.

Not normal

To be sure, it is not normal for vulnerable clients and caregivers for the developmentally disabled to face indiscriminate volleys of dozens of rounds of bullets. It is not normal for patients seeking care and comfort at a family-planning clinic to be butchered in public. And it is clearly not normal for students from elementary school pupils to master’s degree collegians to fear for their lives each time they set foot on school grounds.

Such deviant anomalies of civilized social interactions must never gain even the slightest trace of tacit and resigned acceptance. Once they do, the nation dooms itself to an even heightened risk of pugnacious assaults.

In the immediate aftermath of this week’s carnage in California, President Barack Obama yet again reiterated his resolve not to let Americans react to this atrocity as just a sad but routine part of our way of life:

“We should come together on a bipartisan basis at every level to make these rare as opposed to normal. “We should never think that this is something that just happens in the ordinary course of events because this doesn’t happen with the same frequency in other countries.”

Hand in hand with Obama’s plea, we reiterate our appeal from earlier this week for formation of a broad-based coalition of civic, social and religious leaders in the Mahoning Valley and in communities across the country to marshal their forces to galvanize a national outcry and battle plan against such wanton mass bloodbaths.