Shooting Fields Are Everywhere : San Francisco horror reveals problem anew

A man named Gian Luigi Ferri rounded up three semiautomatic handguns and a satchel containing hundreds of rounds of ammunition and in one unspeakably horrible moment on Thursday transformed the 34th-floor offices of a prestigious San Francisco law firm into a killing zone.

By the time Ferri shot himself to death, his merciless and methodical binge of violence had left eight other people dead and six wounded. The massacre was one of the worst perpetrated by a single individual in San Francisco history. And it was deadly simple and alarmingly easy for the man who was pulling the trigger.

According to San Francisco Mayor Frank Jordan, the Woodland Hills mortgage broker obtained his weapons legally. But how he got his hands on the weapons doesn’t make much difference after the fact.

What might make a difference is to ask whether society is doing enough to try to stop the cancer of gun violence that now cuts short more than 14,000 lives each year by homicide alone.

THE POLLS: Despite public polls that overwhelmingly support the limiting of firearms, our political leaders, who have the power to legislate change, continue to accept these weapons as instruments compatible with the precepts of a civilized society.

Our nation is drowning in firearms, particularly handguns, which are being churned out by manufacturers at a clip of more than 2 million weapons every year. Add that to the estimated 200 million firearms in private hands today and it’s no wonder that every year more and more people die in front of a gun barrel.

The carnage is beginning to have an impact on the consciousness of state leaders. Connecticut and New Jersey, along with California, are beginning to acknowledge the problem through legislation. And Virginia, a traditional stronghold of the National Rifle Assn., has passed a law limiting handgun purchases.

THE POLS: Yet despite these signs of sanity, Congress cannot muster the courage to vote for the mildest of gun-control measures. The floundering Brady bill, which would impose a nationwide five-day wait before a handgun could be delivered to a purchaser, is a case in point.

Jordan, a former police chief, Friday called for new controls, saying “automatic and semiautomatic weapons have no place in American society.” We agree.

It’s true that nuts will be nuts and that if they are intent on harming others they will figure out some evil way. But America makes it all too easy, and the dreadful consequences of that ease are increasingly evident.

Drastically curbing gun availability will not be a cure-all; a knife or a club is still a lethal weapon. But knives do not kill eight people at a clip; semiautomatic weapons do. America will either get a firmer grip on its gun sickness or it will slowly but surely continue shooting itself--and not just in the foot.