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OPINION

Editorial: National suicide plays out one murderous

mass shooting at a time

Texas school 21 killed in school shooting ​School shootings increase ​How to t

shooting

Law enforcement personnel stand outside Robb Elementary School after the shooting Tuesday in
Uvalde, Texas. (Dario Lopez-Mills / Associated Press)

BY THE TIMES EDITORIAL BOARD

MAY 24, 2022 UPDATED 8:40 PM PT
Perhaps this is how it all ends — self-government, self-defense, self-
control, liberty, unity, family. Perhaps the fate of the nation is to watch
its soul die along with the at least 19 students and two adults shot to
death Tuesday at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. This is us,
the American people, on both sides of that gun — and countless other
guns on countless playgrounds, shopping centers, streets and homes,
killing our children, ourselves and each other. Killing our future.

This is who we are. This is what we have become. We can no longer

send our children to school without pangs of anxiety that they will be
in the line of fire in what ought to be havens of safety and learning.
Nor can we find refuge in churches, mosques or synagogues, or in
shopping centers, or at baby showers, picnics or parties. When we feel
in danger, we get out our guns. Our guns put us in danger, so we get
more.

Abraham Lincoln, in his earliest known public address, said that the
still-young United States could never be brought down by a foreign
enemy. It was 1838, he was only 28, and the Civil War was still nearly
a quarter-century into the future. But he was correct when he told his
Lyceum audience that “All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa
combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in
their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by
force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge,
in a trial of a thousand years.”
 WORLD & NATION

19 children, 2 adults killed in Texas in the deadliest school

shooting since Sandy Hook
May 24, 2022

No, any danger to the U.S. comes from within. “If destruction be our
lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher,” he said. “As a nation
of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”

He was president by the time the nation had its most serious brush
with suicide over the question of whether freedom means some people
have the liberty to buy, own and exploit others, or whether it instead
means all must be free. The Civil War was straightforward, with a clear
enemy — even though it was ourselves — that wore different uniforms
and could be defeated on the battlefield.

OPINION

Opinion: We analyzed 53 years of mass shooting data. Attacks

aren’t just increasing, they’re getting deadlier
Sept. 1, 2019

Now it’s not so simple. We are again our own enemies, but what are
we killing ourselves for? We don’t even know. We just keep getting our
guns, loading them and pulling the trigger. We elect political leaders
who promise action, but we never hold them accountable. In any case,
the killings continue. This may be the suicide of which Lincoln spoke.
This may be why we die, not for a great cause but for a loss of love and
respect for one another and the dream that bound our forebears
together.

Is this where the American dream dies — not on a battlefield, but in

our own homes and schools, by our own hands and the hands of our
neighbors?

Updates
4:58 p.m. May 24, 2022: This editorial has been changed to reflect an update of
students killed in the shooting.

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 The Los Angeles Times’ editorial board determines the editorial
positions of the organization. The editorial board opines on the
important issues of the day – exhorting, explaining, deploring,
mourning, applauding or championing, as the case may be. The
board, which operates separately from the newsroom, proceeds on
the presumption that serious, non-partisan, intellectually honest
engagement with the world is a requirement of good citizenship.
You can read more about the board’s mission and its members at
the About The Times Editorial Board page.

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