Each day, across America, we live with the terrifying reality that no place is safe from the threat of gun violence.
Last Sunday, in the wake of a deadly shooting at a medical center in Midtown, we took the extraordinary measure of devoting the front page of the newspaper to an editorial written by Andrew Morse, our president and publisher.
“What can we do?” Morse asked. “The answer is simple: We can change the laws. And we can do that without treading on the constitutional right to own and carry guns.”
We are not alone in that message.
Over the last year, dozens of newspapers in every corner of the country – from Atlanta to California, to big cities, small towns and college campuses and high schools in between – have taken strong stances of their own.
They’ve done that because, like us, they, too, live in the communities in which they cover. And like us, they can no longer remain silent as our friends, our neighbors and our children lose their lives to senseless shootings.
This isn’t a conservative or a liberal issue, as Morse wrote last Sunday. It is an American issue. It is a human issue.
Dallas Morning News / May 7, 2023
‘This has to stop’
Gov. Abbott: Eight more innocent people were killed in Texas. This time it was a shopping mall. They were simply going about their day, men, women, children.
You responded that this was an “unspeakable tragedy.” We tell you that it was not unspeakable, and that the people of Texas need you to speak to it and its cause.
There is nothing conservative about refusing to acknowledge evidence or give voice to the true nature of a problem. The people who are dead today are not dead because a twisted and evil soul walked among them. They are dead because that person was able to obtain a weapon so powerful and with such high capacity that even the bravest and fastest response of law enforcement could not save their lives.
That is what you must speak to if you want to truly lead this state.
The people you represent are living in fear.
This has to stop. You cannot say this is an “unspeakable tragedy” and move on. A leader must have the courage to speak. You must look at this horror, at the devastation wrought on these people, and you must summon the will to act to change the laws that have put us in this terrible place.
— Dallas Morning News Editorial Board
The Harvard Crimson / Feb. 21, 2023
‘We are the generation asking for change’
We are the generation of mass shootings.
We are the generation that has come of age with gun violence.
School shootings have grown up alongside us: From elementary, to middle, to high school, and now college, we have seen our peers shot down with increasing frequency.
We are the students who graduate with degrees in lockdowns and normalized mass paranoia.
We are the generation taught to hide.
We are the generation whose worst fears are realized regularly.
We are the generation that watches our backs.
We are the generation of sorrow.
We are the generation demanding solutions.
Time and time again, we have heard our government’s message loud and clear: guns over lives … we are tired of begging for scraps of a solution.
We are the generation asking for change.
— The Crimson Editorial Board
Los Angeles Times / March 28, 2023
‘Tally of loss and sorrow compounds’
When we look beyond horrific headline-grabbing mass shootings, the tally of loss and sorrow compounds.
How much longer before most Americans can count themselves as survivors of gun violence? What does that do to the national psyche? For parents to say goodbye to their children each morning with the lingering fear it will be the last time they see them. For young people who are trained by the culture to constantly scope out exit routes in case there is a shooter.
We’re a country that purports to care about human life, yet we tolerate frequent mass casualties from guns. While conservative legislators in Tennessee and other states spend their time trying to ban books or drag queens, curtail gender-affirming care for transgender youth, or whitewash public school curriculum in the name of protecting children, they refuse to take meaningful steps to reduce the leading cause of their death in America: gun violence.
A majority of Americans support stronger rules on the sale of guns and feel increasingly dissatisfied with the nation’s failure to more strictly regulate firearms. But too many state and federal lawmakers, mostly Republican, won’t buck the gun lobby and its extreme ideology that even common-sense restrictions amount to government oppression.
So, instead, Americans live with another kind of oppression — the crushing fear that they might be the next victim or survivor of gun violence.
— The Los Angeles Times Editorial Board
Courier Journal / April 11, 2023
‘Why is it so difficult?’
On the 100th day of 2023, at Old National Bank, Louisville added its name to the list of cities that have lost lives in a mass shooting once again. It was only a matter of time.
We can no longer offer up thoughts and prayers without also committing to meaningful action or our condolences are hollow. This gun violence is not only senseless, it is rooted in stubbornness, finger-pointing and platform pontifications.
What we need is resolve.
Why is it so difficult for our elected officials to implement what the majority of constituents say they want?
Instead of spending legislative time codifying background checks and gun restrictions, making sure only responsible gun owners have guns in their possession, our state legislature voted to prohibit local law enforcement agencies in Kentucky from enforcing federal firearm regulations.
How do these lawmakers respond to victims and the families that have lost loved ones now? How do they manage to double-down and prevent municipalities from doing what’s best for their own communities?
— The Courier Journal Editorial Board
The Free Press / Lawrence Free State High School / April 28, 2023
Credit: nicholas
Credit: nicholas
‘Outraged. Afraid. Numb.’
So many students are outraged, afraid and frankly numb from the constant fatal shootings. However, the government has been negligent on the issue of gun safety and should be held accountable.
I continue to wonder how such a preventable act of violence still lives on in students’ lives. I ask for you to see us and how scared we are. I ask for you to hold those accountable for neglecting to protect [us].
Say their names [of the victims] and say all the ones that are bound to happen if we don’t fix this issue now.
— Natasha Torkzaban, editor-in-chief, The Free Press
Daily News / May 8, 2023
‘Solutions that never happen’
President Biden ordered flags to be flown at half-staff for five days in a proclamation [last Sunday], that begins: “As a mark of respect for the victims of the senseless acts of violence perpetrated on...”
… the same word-for-word proclamation was also issued on March 27 for Nashville and on Jan. 21 for Monterey Park, Calif. Last year, it was July 4 for Highland Park, Ill. and May 24 for Uvalde, Texas. In 2021, there were four times: May 26 for San Jose, April 15 for Indianapolis, March 22 for Boulder and March 16 for Atlanta.
What also repeats are the solutions that never happen.
The flags will stay lowered until [last] Thursday evening.
And then they’re back up, until the next proclamation.
— The Daily News Editorial Board
The Suffolk Journal / Suffolk University / April 4, 2023
‘The time is now’
The time for gun control was after 13 people died at Columbine High School in 1999.
The time for gun control was after nine people died in Red Lake, Minnesota, in 2005.
The time for gun control was after 32 people died at Virginia Tech in 2007.
The time for gun control was when 26 people died at Sandy Hook in 2012.
The time for gun control was when 17 people died in Parkland, Florida, in 2018.
The time for gun control was after four people died in Oxford Township, Michigan, in 2021.
The time for gun control was when 21 people died in Uvalde, Texas in 2022.
The U.S. failed to act each of those times, choosing to turn a blind eye to children never returning home, choosing to protect the right to kill in exchange for the blood of innocent Americans.
The time for gun control has been here, and over 100 mass shootings later, the time for gun control is now.”
— Maren Halpin, assistant news editor
The Washington Post / Jan. 24, 2023
‘Changing just one or two rules not enough’
Gun violence is so regular an occurrence in the United States that no incident, however tragic, comes as a surprise.
But events in recent days deserve special attention all the same, as they underscore a core truth about responding to gun violence: changing just one or two rules would not be enough.
As President Biden and the rest of country try, again, to confront the gun violence epidemic, policymakers should understand that no single solution will scrub out this scourge. Doing one thing is better than doing nothing at all — but to pretend the work ends there would be irresponsible.
— The Washington Post Editorial Board
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution / May 7, 2023
‘We don’t have to live this way’
We don’t have to live this way. We don’t have to live in fear of visiting the doctor, or taking a trip to the supermarket, or sending our children to school. We don’t have to duck and cover. Our children don’t have to participate in lockdown drills. We don’t have to sit and watch our streets turn into a combat zone on live television.
We don’t have to mourn a 38-year-old mother who devoted her career to public health. We don’t have to pray all night that four other women fighting for their lives will survive. We don’t have to debate whether guns kill people or people kill people. (They both do.)
We don’t have to argue about whether mental health is a crisis in this country.
But we do live this way.
Every time we watch a gut-wrenching mass shooting unfold, we ask, “What can we do to ensure no city ever again endures the pain Atlanta suffered …?”
There is a simple answer: We can change the laws.
— Andrew Morse, president and publisher
Chicago Tribune / March 28
‘How many mass shootings will it take?’
Again, America grieves.
If Americans are growing numb to the horrific regularity of mass shootings at schools, they shouldn’t. No one with any sense of humanity should allow themselves to brand shootings at schools as simply the world we live in or the sad reality today.
The attack at the Covenant School [in Nashville] should do much more than evoke grief and empathy. It should shake Americans into action.
It is past time for any citizen to countenance voting for a lawmaker, whether at the state or federal level, who refuses to support a ban on assault-style rifles. Such a ban isn’t an end-all solution. But it would take off the streets a weapon that has become synonymous with America’s mass shootings epidemic.
But how many mass shootings, how much bloodshed at schools, will it take for Americans to realize this crisis should be tackled solely with a nonpartisan approach?
After the Sept. 11 attacks, Americans collectively rallied against the threat of terrorism. The scourge of mass shootings shouldn’t be treated any differently.
— The Chicago Tribune Editorial Board
The Denver Post / March 27, 2023
‘Now is the time to act’
We join … community members in unequivocally supporting efforts at the Colorado Capitol to get better control on the deadly weapons flooding our community and often landing in the hands of young Coloradans ill-equipped in decision-making or gun safety even if they don’t have ill intent or trouble controlling their anger or depression.
No one thing will solve gun violence in our communities … but we don’t have the luxury of slowly testing policy proposals one at a time to see what works best.
People are dying and suffering grave injuries from mass shootings, drive-by shootings, homicides and suicides. Now is the time to act.
— The Denver Post Editorial Board
The Mercury News / Jan. 25, 2023
‘Shamefully, this is who we are’
History is full of horrific events in which we shake our heads and ask, “How did that happen? What were they thinking?” It begs the question of what is transpiring today that will be regarded by future generations as deplorable. That historians will record with the hope that they will never be repeated.
Yet, it’s unlikely the California shootings will do anything to move the needle on reducing the amount of gun violence in either California or the United States. Our collective response to the Sandy Hook, Uvalde and Columbine mass shootings makes that clear.
America is a nation that has for decades failed to address its gun violence problem and has no clear strategy for doing so in the future. Shamefully, this is who we are.
— Mercury News and East Bay Times Editorial Boards
The Philadelphia Inquirer/Aug. 23, 2022
‘Lack of action, outrage’
The only thing more disturbing than the relentless pace of shootings that continues unabated across the city is the lack of action and outrage from those sworn to protect residents.
To be sure, Philadelphia is not alone among American cities when it comes to the rise in gun violence. And the mayor, police commissioner, and City Council cannot single-handedly stop the shootings. Yes, mostly Republican lawmakers in Harrisburg, Washington, and the conservatives on the Supreme Court have aided and abetted the country’s worsening gun crisis.
But that should not be a reason to give up.
— The Philadelphia Inquirer Editorial Board