Guns’ Dangerous Accessibility

We live in a violent society where shootings with guns of all kinds are all too commonplace. Last week may have been no different, but the two shooting incidents in the news, one that resulted in the tragic death of an off-duty Corona policewoman and the other in which a man with a history of mental illness held off police and terrorized an Anaheim neighborhood for almost 24 hours, were disturbing reminders of how readily accessible guns are--and how easily some people turn to them in fits of anger.

Last Thursday Officer Patricia Dwyer was buried, the victim of a single shot fired by a man who, according to police, wanted to teach a lesson to the driver of a van that flashed its bright lights and tried to pass him on the Riverside Freeway. The shotgun blast ripped through the van killing Dwyer, the mother of three children, who was a passenger, and seriously wounding another woman riding with the Dwyer family.

Earlier in the week, a 45-year-old Anaheim man, reportedly distraught over a scheduled court appearance on a drunk-driving charge, barricaded himself in the house where he lives with his parents and, armed with a .22-caliber semiautomatic rifle and about 300 rounds of ammunition, held police at bay for almost a day. Police said the man’s mother told them her son said he was “going to go to court and shoot them all.”

Fortunately no one was shot, but it could have been another massacre like the one earlier this month at the post office in Edmond, Okla., where a gunman killed 14 people, or the San Ysidro restaurant two years ago where 21 were killed. In all of the shootings the gunmen were bitter and unstable. And the weapons were so easy to buy. The gunman in Anaheim, with a grudge against the court, reportedly bought his semiautomatic weapon at a local store a few days before terrorizing his neighborhood.

The ease with which people can purchase guns, and the propensity for using guns at the slightest provocation, real or imagined, makes for a dangerous and deadly atmosphere. The killing of Officer Dwyer and the siege in Anaheim are but the latest reminders of that chilling fact.