Iowa's Turn in the Ever Churning Barrel of Mass Shootings
Now is not the time to talk about this, I know, because it never is.
Iowans were less than a week into the new year when the state’s first school shooting of 2024 happened in Perry, located in northern Dallas County. The unthinkable happened here.
Surprisingly, even though we were only four days into the new year, it was not the first such shooting nationally. It was the fifth mass shooting of the new year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which tracks gun violence by collecting information from 7,500 law enforcement, media, government and commercial sources daily.
In 2023, according to the Gun Violence Archive, there were 647 mass shootings nationally - an average of almost two a day.
Which means, as tragic and awful as the nightmare in Perry was, nationally it was simply Iowa’s turn in the ever churning barrel of mass shootings.
Mass shootings in America occur with such regularity there is now a whole genre of expected responses to them by some major public officials. That now routine to-do list, reads like little more than a checklist of cliches, so often are they put into action.
Send thoughts and prayers. Check.
Express support for the affected community. Check.
Hold a press conference to express concern and grief. Check.
Note the heroic action of local law enforcement. Check.
Wonder, with bewilderment, how such a thing could happen. Check.
Express with astonishment that such a thing could happen here. Check.
Offer as an explanation that people have just gotten so crazy these days. Check.
Note that now is not the time to talk about how to reform gun laws so that we might stop these senseless tragedies. Check.
Then never talk about how to reform gun laws so that we might stop these senseless tragedies.
Finally, perhaps most importantly, never, ever do anything to reform gun laws to stop these senseless tragedies.. Check.
We need to talk about this, folks.
And yes, I know now is not the time to talk about reforming gun laws. Because it never is. That is the consistent message after every mass shooting, delivered as a steady drumbeat, from those who keep gun laws weak and thereby allow easy access to guns by people who have no business having guns, allowing mass shootings to continue.
Now is not the time to talk about it, is always the response from those who enable the shooters with their inaction.
Let’s be clear about this. The lawmakers who don’t want to talk about reforming gun laws to protect our kids at school are also the same ones who block gun safety law reforms and stand in the way of doing anything to make it harder for a shooter to get a gun.
Make no mistake about this, too: they are almost uniformly Republicans. There are a few, scattered Democrats who join them, but it is Republicans who have been voting en bloc to prevent meaningful gun law reforms for years.
If they had any appetite to reform gun laws to protect any of us from mass shooters, they’d have done it by now. With an average of nearly two mass shootings a day in America, we’re not exactly treading untrodden ground here. There’s been plenty of time to come up with a plan - which Democrats have - agree to it, and enact it. They haven’t done any of that.
They don’t act - let me rephrase that in practical terms: they empower school shooters with their refusal to allow gun safety law reform - because they don’t think they have to act. They count on the rest of us to forget their obstruction, their votes against gun law reform, and the piles of dead bodies.
They count on the extremist National Rifle Association (NRA), however, to remember those votes and their obstruction with campaign cash and endorsements.
That’s a bet they seldom lose. As a practical matter, being a boot licking lackey for the NRA usually pays off, with little downside - if you don’t count the people shot to pieces all over the country and now in Dallas County, too.
I join everyone in “standing with Perry,” sending my “thoughts and prayers” to those who lost loved ones in Perry, who struggle to survive their bullet wounds in Perry, whose sense of safety and security has forever been shattered. I grieve with Perry, a community I know well, as Dallas County is where I grew up and began my career as a writer and reporter.
What would be a whole lot more meaningful, however, is if we would stand with Perry by doing something that will make it more likely no town will ever again have to experience the horror of a school or mass shooting that Perry is going through right now.
That means demanding that we reform our gun laws to protect kids in school and all of us, too, wherever we gather.
That reform is not going to happen with the current crowd of extremists running Iowa’s state government - the legislature and the governor - who actually work to weaken laws that could protect us all from mass shooters.
Consider this, text taken directly from - ironically - the Dallas County (IA) Sheriff’s webpage.
“WHAT DOES IOWA’S NEW WEAPON PERMIT LAW HF756 MEAN FOR YOU?
Governor Reynolds signed HF756 into law on Aril 2, 2021. The law removes the requirement for a permit to carry in order to purchase a handgun or carry a firearm in public places subject to certain limitations.”
Anyone care to explain how that Republican driven change in Iowa’ gun laws makes us any safer?
People have gotten crazy these days. Not all of us, just the vast majority of Republican policy and law makers (and the sprinkling of Democrats who join them) who work to weaken existing guns laws and who actively block meaningful gun law reform.
Lax gun laws won’t change until we change the people who make and protect lax gun laws.
Change is required to set things straight.
Which brings us to the other group of gun violence enablers: voters who vote for and elect those who choose the NRA’s campaign cash and campaign endorsements over protecting our kids at school from shooters.
When I was a kid in school, the worst thing I had to fear was a pop quiz in arithmetic class. Today, kids routinely do active shooter drills.
Can you imagine? More to the point, can you imagine that we actually have lawmakers who think making little school kids practice securing their classroom and hiding from an active shooter is a better plan than reforming tragically weak gun laws that, if strengthened, could prevent the shooter from getting a gun in the first place? Or that we actually have moms and dads who vote for public office holders who don’t vote to protect their kids?
The NRA lackeys will point out that you must still have a permit to carry a gun within 1,000 feet of a school. That didn’t stop the Perry shooter, they’ll argue.
My response?
“Precisely.”
That’s why we need stronger laws that interrupt potential shooters before they ever get near a school with a gun in their back pack. The NRA approved laws on the books don’t do that.
We all have a responsibility to keep our kids safe.
This is an election year. That means each each of us has a responsibility to know who the public officials are who won’t protect our kids with their votes.
We need to know who they are. We need to not forget who they are. We need to remember what their appetites for NRA campaign cash and endorsements enabled.
I don’t mean with any of this to suggest for a moment that the tragedy of what happened in Perry, or anywhere else where mass shootings occur, is the “fault” of anyone but the shooter.
But a huge part of a public official’s job is to keep the public safe. A lot of public officials - almost entirely Republican public officials - are repeatedly failing that test. They need to be held accountable and replaced by those who will vote to protect our kids.
Know who they are. Remember in November. Vote accordingly. That, sadly, appears to be the only way any of this is going to change.
My daughter received an email right after the shooting from their Prairie (College Community Cedar Rapids) schools reassuring that their kids were safe and the shooting had occurred at the similar sounding Perry schools. And y grandson said that again in class they reviewed and had shooter drills.
Thank you, Barry. And thank you for calling out the republican voters who continue to elect people who have shown over and over again that they have no interest in reforming the gun laws in our country. After Sandy Hook it seemed that an honest effort was being made for background checks before people could purchase a gun and nothing, nothing happened. I thought if we cannot pass something as innocuous as background checks after 20 first graders and 6 teachers were slaughtered in their classrooms 11 days before Christmas nothing is ever going to change because way too many (republican) legislators on every level of leadership are cowards.