12 OCTOBER 5, 2017 RIDGEWOOD TIMES WWW.QNS.COM
EDITORIAL
What will we do with the outrage?
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space as local as possible. What
we’re going through as a country,
however, is an extraordinary time of
peril. It would be irresponsible of us
not to consider and comment on the
current national climate — particularly
our gun culture — from a local
perspective.
The Oct. 1 massacre in Las Vegas
shakes us to the very core. By simple
math, we should be used to mass shootings
by now. We’ve seen so many of
them in the national news over the last
20 years; there have been more than
200 mass shootings this year alone. Yet
this latest massacre — with more than
60 dead and over 500 injured from a
hail of sniper’s bullets — disturbs
and shocks us profoundly unlike any
similar shooting to have occurred in
recent memory.
It could have very easily happened
here. Queens has hundreds of outdoor
concerts every summer in all diff erent
venues. Thousands attend these
concerts to have a good time; they go
through tight security to keep everyone
safe. Not even security could stop
what happened in Vegas, as a sniper
from a building close rained death
upon people whose only sin was being
in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The latest massacre again spurs
calls for greater gun regulation — and,
naturally, the “thoughts and prayers”
of those resistant of any kind of gun
control. They used flawed logic to
rationalize the insanity; they claim
that we shouldn’t bother with more
regulations because criminals will
break the law anyway. There are
laws for everything; should they all be
abolished because people break them?
Of course not.
Other critics point out that local gun
regulations haven’t stopped the fl ow of
guns to Queens and other parts of our
state. That isn’t for lack of our trying;
rather, it’s a symptom of an obviously
broken federal law that enables people
to buy guns in states with very lax
weapons laws, then smuggle them into
New York.
All this bloodshed over the last decade
is shameful, easily preventable
and yet impossible to avoid because of
politics. Sure, everyone’s outraged by
what happened in Las Vegas, just as we
were outraged aft er Orlando, Aurora,
Sandy Hook, Columbine.
But what will we do with that outrage?
If history has taught us anything
— nothing. That will be our prologue to
the next inevitable tragedy.
But it doesn’t have to be.
Everyone — Democrat or Republican,
liberal or conservative, gun owners
and those without guns — must get
behind an eff ort to get assault weapons
out of the people’s hands. Let’s not repeat
history again.
