Another mass school shooting -- 17 dead

A high school in Florida, a troubled 19 year old ex-student with a fascination for guns who had been expelled last year for disciplinary reasons, who had also threatened other students in the past.    He returned to campus today with an AR-15 type rifle and went on a shooting rampage;   17 are dead and another 15 wounded.   The boy  who did the shooting is in police custody.

Later last evening, we learned that the boy's adoptive mother had died three months ago at age 68, and he had been living with a friend since.   His adoptive father had died years ago.

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CN), whose constituency includes the Sandy Hook elementary school that was the scene of a mass shooting several years ago, is one of the leading senators trying to effect some change.   He says Congress must -- at the least -- take the first step:   to provide the funding and find the will to enforce the laws that we already have.   And that has to include providing the services to help someone like this student who had already been identified in the past as a potential risk for just what happened.

Murphy also, with obvious sadness and anger, said that this is an American phenomenon.  It does not happen like this in other countries.   Yes, there are terrorist attacks, with an ideology and suicide bombs.   But the lone, isolated, often disturbed individual, who uses easily-obtained, semi-automatic guns for a school or church massacre, is strictly our own, peculiar to our culture.

In fact, when the school expelled this student, it also issued an order that he was not to be allowed on campus with a backpack, presumably so that he could not come in with a concealed weapon.    Details of today's shooting are not yet known, so we don't know how that was avoided.   But he was officially identified, and widely known among students, as a gun-safety risk.

Sen. Murphy told Chris Hayes that, since the Sandy Hook shooting, Connecticut has tightened its gun control laws -- with a resultant 40% reduction in homicides.  Hayes shared the information that the combined deaths from guns and from opioid overdoses is 100,000 a year.  And Congress has done little about either of them.

The budget that Trump just submitted last week cuts funding for the instant background check system by 16% -- from $73 million to $61 million -- despite near universal public support for strengthening instant background checks.   According to campaign finance records, the NRA contributed roughly $30 million to Trump's presidential campaign.

Ralph