Gerth: London, KY shooter reaction shows Vance is right. Shootings are now 'a fact of life.'

It was 22 years ago when John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo used a sniper rifle to kill and maim people in the Washington, D.C.-Baltimore area. People there were afraid to stop for gas or get out of their cars to go to a store.

It seemed like you couldn’t turn on the television without wall-to-wall coverage of the shootings and the terror Muhammad and Malvo were reigning down on the region.

Fast forward to today and there’s maybe a minute or two each hour on the news channels about Joseph A. Couch , who allegedly sat on a ridge in Southern Kentucky and picked off drivers along Interstate 75. He’s still at large.

Some of the disparity in coverage certainly had to do with the location of the shootings — one in the nation’s capital and the other in a relatively secluded part of fly-over country — but some of it is because we have become inured to gun violence.

I mean, how can you really worry that much about a handful of drivers shot by some whack job along a highway when just a few days earlier, a 14-year-old kid (allegedly) walked into a school in Georgia with the gun his father gave him and killed two of his classmates and two teachers .

JD Vance is right. Shootings have become 'a fact of life'

I hate to agree with JD “He Ain’t From Here” Vance, but these shootings have become “a fact of life.”

The one thing all of these shootings have in common is that all three of the shooters chose the same type of rifle — an assault weapon-style gun that has proven to be the weapon of choice for mass murderers here in the days when the gun culture has broken our society.

That’s the one thing a lot of these mass shootings have in common.

Whether it’s 58 dead in Las Vegas , Nevada; 49 dead in Orlando , Florida; 26 dead in Sutherland Springs , Texas; and in Newtown, Connecticut; 21 dead in Uvalde , Texas; 17 dead in Parkland , Florida …

And on. And on. And on.

Virtually all of these killers use assault weapons — the ones that can be fitted with magazines that will hold dozens and dozens of rounds of ammunition. And can fire them in a blink of an eye without ever having to be reloaded.

The thing is, these types of shootings don’t need to be common, but the gun culture in America has made it more difficult to stop them from happening.

In Kentucky, Republicans and Democrats are owned by the NRA

Owned lock, stock and barrel by the NRA, politicians have refused to take action to stop these shootings. And that is politicians from both parties in Kentucky, where Democrats have been as guilty at kowtowing to the gun nuts as anyone.

They perpetuate the myth that all of this can be cured by a "good guy with a gun," conveniently forgetting that many of these mass shooters were, in fact, "good guys with a gun" until something snapped.

Republicans bear the blame nationally where they have selected Supreme Court justices who have decided that fetuses are the only lives worth saving and have made it nearly impossible to pass legislation that will conform to their warped view of the U.S. Constitution.

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Whether through the courts or through legislation, Republicans have blocked any effort that attempts to restrict guns in any way, including closing the private-sale loophole, instituting waiting periods for gun purchases and even enacting “red flag” laws that allow courts to remove guns from people who are judged to be at risk of harming themselves and others.

Assault rifles are the weapon of choice for mass murders

In Georgia, there isn’t any law that would prevent a homicidal teenager from owning the gun that is the weapon of choice for mass murders.

There’s not a waiting period that would have kept Couch from going to a gun store on Saturday morning and walking out with the AR-15 and 1,000 rounds of ammunition police believe he used later that day to target innocent drivers on I-75.

We’ll never know if a law that would have forced Couch to pause just a couple of days may have given him time to rethink his plans — or maybe to screw up and let slip what he had decided to do.

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It’s clear which party and its irresponsible position on guns is responsible for that.

And it’s clear that at least for now, it’s them who needs to fix it — because as long as they control the presidency, either the U.S. House or Senate, or the Supreme Court, nothing can or will change.

Until then, mass shootings will remain commonplace.

They’ll take up a few minutes each hour on the 24-hour news cycle television channels, and they’ll continue to happen so often that you and I won’t remember the names of the shooters.

Until the Republicans do something about it, these sort of shootings will continue to be just a fact of life.

Joseph Gerth can be reached at 502-582-4702 or by email at jgerth@courierjournal.com.

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This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Gerth: London, KY shooter reaction shows Vance is right. Shootings are now 'a fact of life.'