Way too many questions, but far too few answers

Questions, questions, questions and yet still no answers.

What is it about the most recent school shooting — at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. over two weeks ago on Valentine’s Day — that has sent the usual week-long news cycle working well into overtime, if not maybe even double or triple-overtime?

By my count this was No. 145 since Jan. 1, 2010. That number, by-the-way, did not come from the anti-gun group who practices what even the Washington Post calls “voodoo math” with their shooting stats. But sadly, it is more than double the number of school shootings for each of the decades of the 1990s and 2000s.

Why has what Nikolas Cruz did as he systematically plotted this heinous crime upped the volume on the conversation of school shootings?

Was it him setting off a fire alarm that opened the gates to a killing field of innocent young people? Or, perhaps, it is the number of 17 poor souls gunned down? Or was it the use of the AR-15, the campaign poster for more gun legislation? Laws that, by-the-way, can be on the books but unless enforced…go ahead, you finish the thought.

Take your pick, because one school shooting is one too many. And the targets are random as a Midwestern tornado, skipping one side of a street, yet devastating the other.

These episodes stood out in my mind. Columbine in 1999; Sandy Hook in 2012; Umpqua Community College in 2015; Marysville-Pilchuck in 2014 or Virginia Tech in 2007 all jump off the page, probably because of the double-digit death tolls, or geographic familiarity.

Yet after all this carnage, a society that has sent people to the moon, transplanted hearts and put amazing computers in the palm of our hands, has no answers what-so-ever.

We’re perfectly capable of yelling at one another and fixing the blame, yet never coming anywhere close to fixing the problem.

The most recent tragic numbers are just more sad dings on a hardened surface that seems as impossible to dent. It’s been as elusive as the road to Mideast peace where some of the best minds humankind has known have never been unable to find an answer.

The tragedies of school shootings that first struck our area in 1996 when Barry Loukaitis shot up Frontier Junior High in Moses Lake, and returned last September at Freeman, continue.

So do the same old talking points:

• too many and too powerful guns.

• too little mental health care.

• bullying and social media.

• arm the teachers — or not.

• schools being soft targets.

• metal detectors at the doors.

And somehow there is an expectation government will solve the problem. Yet the people who make our laws can’t stand to be in the same room. And, as has been illustrated with this tragedy, finger pointing is what some do best.

What’s more, that “see something, say something” mantra we the people are urged to follow apparently fell on way too many deaf ears in Broward County.

I see good bits, pieces and parts from just about every suggestion out there.

Fewer guns? Sure, in the wrong hands that is. Better school security? Yep, I like the fact that I have to buzz in and state my purpose at the front door of my grandson’s school in District 81.

How about improved efforts to diagnose health problems “from the neck up” as former congressman Patrick Kennedy said recently while visiting Spokane for a presentation on mental health

But the stare down over even this shooting will soon wane as some new media-driven crisis is sure to take its place. Until the next shots are fired.

Will Parkland be the Paul Revere rallying cry to finally put our insanely successful problem-solving talents to work and find an answer?

One watershed moment 60 years ago, writes CNN’s Steve Cortes — the Our Lady of the Angels school fire of 1958, which killed 92 students and three nuns — was the last large casualty school fire in America. Why? Because many new safety measures such as fire exits, extinguishers and fire drills became commonplace after that tragedy.

Will memories of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School finally be that moment where there is an answer to school shootings?

Paul Delaney can be reached at [email protected].