Homecoming football games and the festivities that surround them are supposed to be times of celebration and community bonding, even if the home team loses.
In three small Mississippi towns and at two colleges over this past weekend, homecomings took on a nightmarish aspect because of what has become the all-too-familiar eruption of gunfire.
The five seemingly unrelated shootings over less than 24 hours produced 10 deaths and injured at least 15 others, not to mention the dozens if not hundreds who were traumatized by what they witnessed.
Leland, a Delta town of less than 4,000, accounted for the worst of the bloodshed, sparked by what authorities described as a “disagreement” among some of the people who had gathered in the downtown area following the homecoming game at the local high school. Six were killed in the gunfire there, and more than a dozen others were injured.
The frequency of gun-related homicides has made people either fearful of the violence or hardened to it. Whatever the reaction, the problem has not been solved.
As a matter of public policy, Mississippi’s approach to gun violence has been to make it easier for individuals to arm themselves as a means of self-protection. Rather than making people feel safer, it has had the opposite effect by putting more guns into circulation in a state already awash with them.
As a result, according to the Pew Research Center’s most recent analysis of publicly available data, Mississippi trails only the District of Columbia for the nation’s highest rate of gun murders and for the nation’s highest rate of all gun-related deaths, including homicides, suicides and accidents.
The conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court has made it hard for states to reduce the prevalence of guns, even among those states that would like to. The most sensible gun restrictions, such as bans on assault-style weapons and limits to where concealed firearms can be carried, are subject to judicial overrule because of the court’s overly broad interpretation of the Second Amendment.
There is a tendency in Mississippi to wrongly believe that gun violence is an urban phenomenon, something that you mostly worry about around Jackson or Memphis. The problem, however, is widespread, affecting communities large and small. Time and again it’s been demonstrated that, in the heat of the moment, people who are armed are likely to settle their disagreements with a gun. It makes little difference where they live.
This past weekend’s casualties are further affirmation of that. No place and no occasion is safe if there are gun-toting hotheads in the vicinity. Lax gun laws only increase the odds of coming across them.
The original editorial was updated to reflect the latest death toll from the shootings.
