What can government do to stop massacres like Las Vegas, Orlando, or Parkland? What laws can we pass to fix this mess we’re in?

These questions are at the very center of our current debate. With a string of mass shootings in recent years, there comes a point when we have to sit down and really have this talk. We have to sit down, both sides of the aisle, and talk about the biggest obstacle in making the changes necessary to make our country safer.

We have to talk about the fact that what we have done simply isn’t working.

On the Right, there is the great line about how no new law would have stopped these shooters. What the killers did was already against the law. Implicit in that defense, however, is the idea that the laws we currently have simply do not work. The question is… why?

Every aspect of the system we currently have in place in Florida completely fell apart in the case of Nickolas Cruz. From the FBI all the way down to local law enforcement, the school system, and even child and family services, Cruz is a prime example of someone who fell through the cracks.

How does that even happen? How does every possible agency get it so wrong? How do the people who work for the government that is supposed to protect us from such things even allow this to happen? For God’s sake, the school’s own resource officer didn’t even enter the school while the Parkland Shooting was going on.

When so many people sit on their thumbs instead of doing their job, and children are massacred, it’s time to take a good, long look at the system we’ve built to stop these situations.

It seems ridiculous to me that we would entrust the successful defense of new laws to people who clearly cannot enforce the ones we already have. The same people who say that all cops are corrupt racists who murder blacks, adults and children alike, are the same ones now calling for increased law enforcement in our schools and making sure they are the only people anywhere who have guns.

It’s not logical. It’s an entirely emotional argument that hinges on the belief that if we just have more laws and more government, then we could really solve our problems.

But, the government, laws, and enforcers of those laws are all falling down on the jobs they currently have. President Trump and Congress – Republicans AND Democrats – should take the time to focus on what we can fix. Not what we can add.

Gun control, gun limitations, or whatever else you want to call it? It’ll never work if the same system we have now continues to fail at almost every turn.