"Do something!"
The chant that arose from a Dayton, Ohio, crowd over the weekend should echo nationwide.
People in Dayton are suffering from the latest killing spree in an American city, one that came hours after an assault on back-to-school shoppers at an El Paso, Texas, Walmart. And that incident was just days after more killing in California.
There have been something like 250 mass shootings this year and more before them, each adding to the rising tally.
Twenty-two are dead in El Paso, nine dead in Dayton. Dozens more were injured in both places. Millions more are scared.
The attacks happen in churches and synagogues, in movie theaters, at concerts, in entertainment venues, on college campuses and in schoolhouses, all of them places where Americans ought to feel safe but clearly haven't been.
The chant that arose in Dayton is hardly the only time people have asked leaders to do something to deter mass murders and other gun violence.
It is just the latest angry reaction, this one directed at the Ohio governor as he tried to address grieving people gathered for a vigil.
First one voice, then others shouted the demand for action, their cries morphing into a deafening chant, according to news reports from the Dayton historic district where the shooting occurred.
They were screaming what others of us are feeling -- anger and desperation for action.
Their friends and neighbors died or were injured at the hands of a shooter armed with an assault-style weapon. He cut all those people down in less than the minute that elapsed between his opening fire and on-duty police ending the assault.
He was armed to kill many more and certainly could have, had police not stopped him as quickly as they did.
So might have the El Paso gunman, also armed with an assault-style weapon, had he not surrendered to police after inflicting the horror he did there.
Investigations are ongoing in both cases. We'll know soon enough, if we ever do, what motivated these young men to do what they did.
But we already know that their weapons of choice were weapons of war, designed to rip human bodies apart on the battlefield.
Their sale was once banned to the public. That ban should be reinstated. While that action won't take all such weapons out of circulation, it would slow their proliferation.
That step, like universal background checks, is on the list of those crying for someone to do something -- do anything -- about gun violence and the senseless slaughter occurring in America.
Yes, attention must be given to mental health and all the other surrounding issues, too.
But we must insist that those who can change the gun laws change them. Or we must elect someone who will.
There have been too many deaths, even the horrific murders of those Sandy Hook children, that failed to bring about reasonable gun law changes. It is hard to imagine that anything will happen now.
But it could.
This call to do something was aimed last weekend at a governor, but it extends to us all.
Hear the call and keep it up.
Do not tolerate racism, hate speech or white supremacy, wherever or however it shows itself. Do something to call out intolerance. Embrace those who are different from you.
None of us should fear that skin color or religion makes you a target. Yet here we are again, mourning victims of domestic terrorism and worrying that we could be next.
Do something.
Commentary on 08/07/2019