by Kerry Dougherty
Ask them.
Someone please ask the knee-jerk lefties who joined the Greek Chorus of “we must do more to end gun violence” last week just what “we” — the government, I suppose — could have done to prevent the massacre of six Walmart employees in their Chesapeake break room last Tuesday.
Ask them.
I’ll wait.
An assault weapon ban? Uh, no. That wouldn’t have prevented this. He used a pistol.
One gun a month? Nope. The shooter only bought one gun.
Short of a total ban on firearms, which would have to include confiscation of every weapon in the country, there is no law that would have saved these innocent lives from this homicidal maniac.
That’s the sad, but awful truth.
Andre Bing, the psycho who shot himself after killing six co-workers, reportedly used a legally purchased handgun to embark on his hideous shooting spree.
Sure, I suppose we could pass a law that would mandate a one-day cooling off period from the time of purchase until possession of a firearm. That would have delayed the massacre from Tuesday to Wednesday. A one-week waiting period would have put it off a week.
Other than that? There are no laws that could have prevented this insane man from slaughtering his co-workers.
I can think of a couple of things that might have prevented the workplace problem: if the co-workers who said Bing was paranoid and erratic and who had promised that if he ever got fired he’d “retaliate and people would remember who he was,” had reported him to upper management. Perhaps they could have gotten the guy removed from the job.
They never did, according to CNN.
Yet the surviving employees shouldn’t feel guilty. We’ve all worked with crazy people without trying to get them sacked. Fortunately none were killers.
A similar story emerged with the 2019 Municipal Center shootings in Virginia Beach. After the slaughter, the husband of one victim said his wife had wanted to bring her own gun to work on the day of the murders because she was afraid of the man who turned out to be the shooter.
Bing clearly had mental problems. People who knew him said he was mean and believed the government was watching him.
Mental health care has to be more readily available. A psychiatrist I know in Virginia Beach told me last year that the waiting period to get professional help is unacceptably long. We have a shortage of providers in our area.
Gov. Glenn Youngkin has promised to make mental health a priority in 2023. That’s a start.
And it makes far more sense than simply issuing platitudes about gun violence.
This column has been republished with permission from Kerry: Unemployed & Unedited.
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