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Editorial

As Congress Sleeps, More People Die

Richard Martinez has a message for the politicians who have been calling to express condolences on the death of his son, Christopher Michaels-Martinez, in the massacre of six people in Isla Vista, Calif., on Friday: “I don’t care about your sympathy,” he said. “Get to work and do something.”

Through his tears, he called lawmakers in Washington “a rudderless bunch of idiots” for bowing to the National Rifle Association and refusing to enact restrictions that might have kept three semiautomatic handguns away from the deranged shooter, Elliot Rodger. “These people are getting rich sitting in Congress,” he said. “And what do they do? They don’t take care of our kids.”

In being bullied by the gun industry into rejecting one of the most effective ways of limiting the proliferation of guns — universal background checks — members of Congress have become complicit in shootings by anyone who should not be allowed to own a gun because of a criminal or mental health record. It is not just the mass shootings like the one in California that the nation needs to focus on (victims in these horrific events make up less than 1 percent of all gun homicides), but also the more than 11,000 individual deaths from gun violence every year, most of which get no attention, or the more than 19,000 annual suicides by gun.

The background check bill failed in the Senate a year ago, mostly because of Republican opposition. The gun lobby, determined to prevent a single restriction from being approved, spread vicious misinformation about the creation of a gun registry that left lawmakers quaking and raised ludicrous fears of government confiscation.

In the days since the Isla Vista shooting, some lawmakers have talked about finding new ways to keep guns out of the hands of people with a history of mental illness. The proposals would barely reduce gun violence and could be effective only if a universal background check system were in place, but they are still worth pursuing.

The best ideas along these lines require a better definition of how severe a mental illness needs to be before it prevents someone from possessing a gun, and how to share information about illness with a state or federal background system. Currently, federal law prohibits gun ownership by felons or anyone who has been involuntarily committed to a mental health institution, a high bar that obviously misses thousands of people.

Last year, a consortium of top mental health professionals said the government needed to go further and ban gun possession from those who have been involuntarily committed to outpatient treatment if they pose a danger to themselves or others. People should also be unable to buy guns, the group said, if they have been convicted of a violent misdemeanor, subject to a domestic violence restraining order, convicted of drunken driving two or more times in five years, or convicted of two misdemeanors involving a controlled substance in five years.

Some of those policies have been enacted in California, but the group recommended that states go further. Specifically, parents or other relatives should be allowed to petition a court for a restraining order prohibiting gun ownership by those who pose a credible risk of harm to themselves or others.

Would these measures have prevented Elliot Rodger’s rampage, which ended with his suicide? Possibly not. With so many guns in this society, no law will ever prevent all gun violence, but that should not stymie attempts to reduce it. The greatest danger the N.R.A. poses is not just its lobbying might or its lies, but the hopelessness it induces in good people who have given up pressing for new restrictions. More than 280 Americans are shot each day, and every bullet should send the opposite message.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 20 of the New York edition with the headline: As Congress Sleeps, More People Die . Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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