Gun violence: Where are the angry moms today?

Some kids are passionate about sports, some about making top grades in school, some with hunting or fishing, some with cars. 

We trust that most children and young adults will somehow learn to manage their passions and interests appropriately often with the help of parents, friends, teachers or other mentors. And we also depend on the law, for example, laws that prevent the purchase and use of potentially dangerous substances, like alcohol, by young people.  In time, or through experience, most learn how to accentuate the positives of a passionate interest or curtail the behavior when it moves in a negative way.

But what happens when a passion or interest goes awry?  Then, we call it an obsession. For example, a grades-obsessed student obtains and abuses Adderall in hopes of boosting performance, a hunter or fisherman becomes a "poacher" for taking more than his limit, or a car owner is tried as a murderer because impaired or reckless driving resulted in a deadly accident.

Now, let's consider the case of Darion Aguilar, who according to Maryland Police, was an anxious young man of 19 who was "obsessed" with mass killings, like Columbine. Having and indulging this interest through reading, game playing, thought or fantasy is disturbing, but not criminal. Nor is it a clear signal of a mental health disorder, though in the aftermath of the shooting deaths of two people by Aguilar in a Maryland shopping mall, it will likely be painted that way.

What jumped out at me in a Wednesday Washington Post article was the fact that Aguilar, at age 19, legally purchased a pistol-grip, 12-gauge shotgun at a store in Rockville, Md. Then, some days later, he bought a substantial quantity of ammunition. (He had 54 shells when he entered the mall but fired only nine, killing two people and then himself.)

Does this strike you as the least bit odd? A 19-year old from College Park who works at Dunkin' Donuts who spends a couple week's pay, dropping $300-500 on a pistol grip shotgun (a configuration made for small spaces) and another hundred on at least three boxes of 12 gauge ammo?

It seems very odd to me.

Something else does, too: If that young man had killed two people at the same mall on the same day with his mother's car - and a blood alcohol level - we would implicate him as a killer, just the same. But we might also consider his mother, and the people who sold or served the alcohol to Aguilar, as accessories to his crime.

It didn't used to be that way though. Drunk driving, even when it resulted in death, was often treated as an unfortunate accident, involving otherwise good, generally hardworking people. That was certainly the attitude when I was growing up, and young people of my generation sometimes took risks with alcohol and driving that would be harshly punished today.  

It wasn't until about 1980 that a small group of angry women - Mothers against Drunk Driving or MADD - mobilized public support for measures that focused attention on alcohol abuse, frequent drunk drivers, alcohol sales to minors, bartenders who serve too much to patrons, and parents who hosted underage drinking.

MADD saw to it that any harm to others resulting from the use of an automobile under the influence would be seen not as an accident or aberration, but as a crime, amounting to the use of a deadly weapon - a car driven by an alcohol impaired person. Today, a drunk driver who kills another commits an act tantamount to manslaughter or murder. When young people are the drunk drivers, those who allowed or aided in the act are seen as accessories to this crime.

In its time, MADD's campaign succeeded in reshaping public attitudes and placing new constraints around two American freedoms: the freedom to obtain and drink alcohol, and the freedom to drive an automobile. It hasn't eliminated drunk driving deaths, but it sure changed our perceptions about them.

Today, our society is angry and scared about the rising death toll associated with mass murders by troubled young men with guns. Darion Aguilar is only the latest.

With regard to alcohol, he's a child in the eyes of MADD, lawmakers, and retail merchants, a kid who's not old enough to buy a $7 six pack of beer - in part because it could turn him into a killer behind the wheel. Yet, both Maryland and federal law allow for the sale of "long guns" and ammunition to those 18 and older, and of handguns to those 21 and older.

Whether Aguilar has a mental disorder is not the key question in this case, though many will argue that it is. The real question is about whether federal and state lawmakers will ever muster the courage to ask young people, merchants, manufacturers, police, and parents to take on as much legal responsibility and diligence with regard to the sale, purchase, ownership, and safe use of guns and ammunition as they must to sell, purchase, and use alcohol and automobiles. In irresponsible or immature hands, both are deadly weapons.

More than 30 years ago, the law turned up the heat and put out the word - increasing the drinking age; busting merchants; holding bartenders, party hosts, and parents accountable; and prosecuting drunk-driving crimes as manslaughters or homicides. At the behest of angry and grieving moms, the goal was to stem, then reverse, a rising tide of drunk-driving deaths by forcing people and industries to take responsibility for eliminating irresponsible and deadly abuse of alcohol and automobiles.  

Today, we face a rising fear of gun-related deaths - suicides, homicides, and random shooting incidents. Yet, we shrug at inability of lawmakers to change gun laws that let merchants sell pistol-grip shotguns and rifles to teenagers as though they still lived on the frontier, hold no adult or parent liable for the ownership and security of guns and ammunition in their homes, and require nothing in the way of product safety improvements from gun makers.

As we struggle for solutions, I must ask:  Where are all of those angry moms today? I think that we have a lot to learn from them.