How Much More Blood?

Even if all guns were legally banned--and no one is proposing that--some dangerous people would manage to get and use them to create mayhem and death. But it’s also clear that reasonable gun control legislation can result in a critical difference, making it harder for criminals to obtain firearms. And it would help keep weapons out of the hands of disturbed or unbalanced youngsters who, for whatever reason, seek vengeance on others--as happened so tragically in Colorado on Tuesday.

California learned the horrible lesson of schoolyard violence 10 years go when Patrick Purdy, a deranged drifter, stepped onto the playground of Cleveland Elementary School in Stockton and fired 106 rounds in less than two minutes from an assault weapon, a knockoff of the Russian AK-47. Five children were killed and 29 others were wounded. A decade later, the California Legislature still is struggling to adopt a workable ban on assault weapons, but a solution is in sight with SB 23, by Sen. Don Perata (D-Alameda). This bill needs to be passed promptly and signed into law by Gov. Gray Davis.

In Colorado, the gun control debate was on a different tack. Three bills headed for passage would have liberalized Colorado’s weapons policy. They would have allowed more people to get concealed-weapons permits, barred local governments from enacting gun controls and prohibited cities from suing gun makers. After the massacre at Columbine High School, authors withdrew two of the measures and Gov. Bill Owens said he would veto the third.

It’s likely the bills will be reintroduced after the grief of Columbine has faded. But terrorizing images of the massacre will not dim so quickly. Coloradans must make it clear to their lawmakers that any such legislation would be a cruel affront to the memory of the victims of Columbine.

The National Rifle Assn. and its president, Charlton Heston, can be credited with having the good sense to scale back the group’s planned convention in Denver next week from three days to one. But it was insensitive of Heston to say that the NRA should not cancel the meeting altogether because members need to express their “unshakable unity” in the face of the tragedy. Denver Mayor Wellington Webb correctly said that this is the wrong message.

In Sacramento Thursday, the shooting played a major role in the debate over a bill by Assemblyman Wally Knox (D-Los Angeles) to limit gun sales to one a month per person. The bill passed the Assembly by a bare majority. In a moment of high drama, Assemblyman Dick Floyd (D-Wilmington), who normally does not vote on gun control legislation, said he had decided to vote yes on Knox’s measure after watching reports of the massacre on television and then being haunted by memories of death in the Korean War. “Hell, it never bothered me, but last night I couldn’t sleep,” the gruff former Army sergeant said.

Hell. That’s what it is. What the parents and wounded will be living through for months or years. What awaits with the next massacre somewhere else in America, maybe just down the street from your home. The forces that sent the two Colorado teenagers on their trip of death might never be fully understood. And some of their destruction did come from homemade bombs, not guns. But one thing is sure. If it had been just a little more difficult for them to get their hands on a rifle, a pistol and two shotguns and ammunition, Columbine might not have been the hell it was in those fateful hours Tuesday.