America loves guns more than kids. Uvalde is just more proof. | Editorial

It will happen again.

Another state. Another town. Another school.

Another outpouring of thoughts and prayers.

Another call to stand up to the gun lobby.

Another failed attempt to pass a legislative compromise that wouldn’t do enough to fix the problem.

The result will be the same: nothing changes and more children will die.

In 2020, guns passed cars as the number one source of child mortality. And yet, school shootings, a national horror, are only one way that guns have robbed our country of its young people. Guns kill children so often in Philadelphia that their deaths are rarely considered news outside of the region.

This can’t continue — it shouldn’t continue — but it will.

Even if the stone hearts of Senate Republicans could be softened or the stubbornness of Democratic Sens. Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin toward eliminating the filibuster overcome, there is no policy reform on the table that can change the fact that there are more guns than people in this country, a status that is unique in the developed world.

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More gun control is needed. We need lawmakers in Washington and Harrisburg to pass commonsense reforms, including red flag laws, banning AR-15-style guns that combine the accuracy of a rifle with the capacity of a handgun, monthly limits on purchases, and age restrictions that exclude teenagers from gun ownership.

But none of these changes is sufficient on their own. We need societal change on guns. While it is unlikely that the United States will ever adopt a less-is-more gun culture like Japan’s or the United Kingdom’s, it is imperative that we abandon the toxic firearm obsession that routinely produces horrors like Columbine, Sandy Hook, Parkland, and now Uvalde, Texas.

We must value our children as much as we claim to.

“We must value our children as much as we claim to.”

America’s kids are not OK. Pediatricians say anxiety and depression are on the rise in children, a trend that predates the COVID-19 pandemic. Is it any surprise that many of our children are anxious and sad? Despite this country’s affluence and the promise of life enshrined in our Declaration of Independence, we are unwilling to make even the smallest sacrifices to address the two greatest threats to our children’s future — gun crime and climate change.

Instead, we take aim at them with book bans, refusals to acknowledge their identities, and rules that persecute their teachers.

It will be decades before today’s youth have the political power to fix problems that, if our current leaders don’t act now, will persist as these traumatized children complete their education, become adults, and consider having children of their own.

At the very least, today’s U.S. Senate should revive and enact the Manchin-Toomey Amendment, which would require criminal and background checks when weapons are sold at gun shows or online. It’s an inadequate measure, but it’s the only proposal that has any chance of passage.

That is our bleak reality — and it means the carnage will continue until we value our kids more than our guns. It means another Uvalde is inevitable.