Opinion: The latest grim mass killing shows yet again the need for better gun laws

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The details are different, but the situation is savagely familiar: An armed and angry man walked into a crowded setting on Wednesday and shot and killed many of the people there. This time, it was nine workers at San Jose’s Valley Transit Authority, some of whom the shooter, who also killed himself, had worked with for years. According to databases maintained by news agencies, universities and nonprofit organizations, this was the nation’s 15th mass killing — defined as four or more people dead, not including the assailant — and the 232nd mass shooting — of 2021. In 2020, 106 people died in mass killings. After less than five months in 2021, 86 people are already dead in such killings, all shootings.

As always, the violence was followed by exclamations of anger and frustration over the prevalence of gun violence and the failure of lawmakers to take steps to reduce it, and someone somewhere on what’s somehow viewed as “the other side” said it was too soon to politicize the senseless deaths. But this time the violence was also met with a numbness that has become increasingly common. It’s as if it helps preserve one’s mental health to not engage.

Don’t listen to that voice. Don’t give into that feeling. Don’t stop caring about gun violence and striving to limit it. Yes, millions of Americans who believe in the immutability of keeping and bearing arms aren’t going to change their minds or stop seeing incremental, sensible changes in gun laws as a slippery slope toward gun confiscation. Yes, there will be another shooting soon. But reforms aren’t impossible. In 1994, with Democrats controlling the White House and Congress, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-San Francisco, won approval of a 10-year ban on the sale of certain semi-automatic weapons. Democrats once again control Washington, and Feinstein is again pushing a bill to prohibit the sale, transfer and manufacture of such weapons in the U.S.

Congress should pass that and also close the broad loopholes in background checks before individuals can buy weapons. A House measure passed in March would ban people who are not licensed firearm importers, manufacturers or dealers from selling or trading firearms to other people.

Congress should also take up President Joe Biden’s request that sweeping new rules be established for “ghost guns” — relatively inexpensive mail-order weapons without serial numbers that can be assembled at home by buyers. And the federal government should also consider boosting the budget of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives so it can finally provide adequate oversight of the gun industry. A March report from the Center for American Progress noted that in 2019, only one in six of the nation’s 53,000 retail gun dealers and 13,000 firearms manufacturers faced inspections to determine if they were complying with federal rules. “The lack of timely inspections presents an immediate and sustained risk to public safety,” the agency itself noted in its 2020 budget proposal.

Locally, San Diego City Attorney Mara Elliott makes a powerful point when she calls for addressing the “boyfriend loophole” that allows some accused domestic violence abusers and stalkers to escape federal restrictions on their acquiring firearms. Given how many people are killed or wounded by those with whom they have or had an intimate relationship, it’s stunning that this loophole hasn’t been targeted by lawmakers of all ideologies.

Simultaneously seeking these reforms may seem like it is asking too much in and of a nation so desensitized by gun violence — a nation that has far more gun deaths and guns per capita than any other developed nation. But the effort needs to be made.