Walt Rubel Commentary: Don’t blame police or the car show

The Las Cruces Police aren’t to blame for the mass shooting Friday night at Young Park that left three people dead and 15 wounded.

Freshman Rep. Sarah Silva was wrong when she said police had, “the resources they need to address the issues.” Anybody who has made a police call recently and waited forever for an officer to arrive knows they are short on manpower.

And it’s not just staffing. Recent changes to the law on bail reform and the inability to charge and convict those found to be incompetent to stand trial also prevent police from being able to effectively do their jobs.

As a member of the Legislature, it’s Silva’s responsibility to provide those resources that she falsely claims police already have. She wasn’t a member of the Legislature last year when lawmakers rebuffed Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s call for a special session to address public safety, but she will be this year. The governor has made clear she plans to do just that.

The unauthorized car show wasn’t to blame for the mass shooting either.

I sympathize with nearby residents who are tired of the noise and commotion late at night. The city probably should have been more responsive to their calls for help. A gate that is intended to lock at 11 p.m. clearly isn’t enough.

But, young people have been gathering to show off their cars ever since the end of World War II, and not always with the permission of local authorities. It’s sort of a right of passage in this country. If they weren’t at Young Park they would have been somewhere else, with the same result.

The sad fact is, mass shootings have become our new reality. Ours was the 53rd mass shooting in the United States this year, and we aren’t even through March. You can find the list on Wikipedia. Before our mass shooting on March 21 there was one in Alabama on March 19 and two the day before, one in Pueblo, Colorado and the other in Georgia.

The list covers all of America, from the biggest cities to the smallest towns. On Feb. 9, seven people were shot during a house party in Las Angeles. The day before, five people were shot and killed in Byron, Wyoming. 
 
The list tilts more toward Texas and the southern states, but nobody is immune. Everybody gets their turn. Friday night was ours.

Based on preliminary reporting, this was an incident where two heavily armed groups of combatants began shooting at each other without warning. More than 50 bullets were found at the scene from an unknown number of different guns.

In the future, we will undoubtedly work to prevent mass shootings by “hardening” the targets. We’ll have more police checkpoints, more restrictions on mass gatherings, more surveillance cameras watching our every move. We’ll also have less liberty and freedom of movement.

None of that will matter. As long as damaged and violent people have easy access to weapons, our time will come around again.

I know this is a crazy idea … and I’m just spitballing here … but what if we made it harder for teenagers to buy semi-automatic weapons?

Nah, that’ll never work. Let’s just crack down on the car shows instead.


Walter Rubel can be reached at [email protected]. 

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