The Problem America Cannot Fix

The deadliest acts of mass murder in the United States since 9/11 all share one feature: The killer in every case used an assault-style weapon or a firearm equipped with a high-capacity magazine. This was again the case on Monday, at a shooting at a Kentucky bank that killed five, and in the recent shooting at the elementary school in Nashville that killed six, including three 9-year-old children.

And yet, the country has failed to adopt the policies needed to keep these weapons out of the hands of those who would abuse them. At the most obvious level, mass shootings are a serious and worsening problem that imposes substantial burdens on the public. But they are something else as well: a national disgrace that illuminates the inability of the American political system to adopt numerous popular public-policy strategies that together could substantially reduce the prevalence and destructiveness of these events. One of those measures—the federal assault-weapons ban—was in place for a decade, but it was allowed to lapse in