Why America should make it harder to buy guns

The motives for mass murder vary. The teenager in Buffalo who on May 14th shot and killed ten people, most of them black, was driven by racial paranoia. The 68-year-old who killed one and injured five on May 16th in a Californian church hated Taiwanese people. What impelled Salvador Ramos to kill at least 21 on May 24th in and around a school in Texas may someday become apparent, though Mr Ramos is no longer alive to explain himself.

What these horrors have in common, though, is the murder weapon. Guns are simple, reliable tools for killing. A man with a gun and plenty of ammunition can kill more people, more quickly and with far less physical effort than he can with a knife, a blunt object or his bare hands. The weapon Mr Ramos used—a military-style assault rifle with high-capacity magazines—allowed him to keep shooting until someone shot him. That most of his victims were children makes the crime unusually horrific. But it resembles countless other American tragedies in that the easy availability of guns made it deadlier than it might have been.