Contradictory constraints we are unwilling to address.

From Has Anyone Highlighted This Key Detail About the Texas Shooter's Background Check? by Matt Vespa.  I am not certain that Vespa has his facts right and certainly the Uvalde shooting has been marked by a particular cloud of factual uncertainty.  We still do not seem to know with confidence some of even the most basic elements of timeline and context.

Ramos was known to be trouble. He got into fights, slashed his own face, told friends he hoped to join the military so he could kill people and posted multiple rape and death threats on the app Yubo. One girl reported him, but online harassment reports are probably common which led to these complaints not receiving a second glance. Where the line to inform authorities becomes clearer was when he posted pictures of bags of dead cats. He also drove around town shooting people with a BB gun. Jim Geraghty noted that Texas courts have upheld the notion that a BB gun are deadly weapons. Assault charges could have been possible, preventing Ramos from buying his weapons. There were plenty of laws that could have stopped this kid, granted some need updating—but let’s talk about the background check.

[snip]

So, what happened here? Was this a background check failure? It’s not the first time. Dylann Roof, Devin Patrick Kelley, and Nikolas Cruz were all able to legally buy their weapons either due to severe clerical errors or authorities simply dropping the ball. If that’s the case, then this whole narrative about expanding background checks has been delivered a massive blow. The system is only as good as the people tasked with its maintenance. 

Sandy Hook, Stoneman Douglas High School, Sutherland Springs Church shooting, and now Uvalde.

All four with known wolves (perpetrators with extensively documented mental health problems with frequent prior interactions with law enforcement) having purchased weapons to which they were not supposed to have access either because they lied or because the system failed to catch the error.

Our challenge in the face of these tragedies is to develop solutions which would have prevented those tragedies.  We never seem to focus on problem solving, instead focusing on sloganeering.  

I suspect we keep reiterating this tragedy of inconsequentiality because the root issues are so difficult.  There is a delicate line to tread between being alert and responsive to an individual's developing mental issues without intruding on an individual's civil rights.  

We don't want to constrain people's freedoms when they have not committed a crime

We don't want to punish people for mental illness

We don't want to circumscribe people's right to self-defense

If those are the constraints with which we are choosing to work, and I think they are, then any solution has to work within those constraints.  Alternatively, we need to change the constraints.  

And that's the rub.  I think almost all people are to a greater or lesser degree sympathetic to all three constraints.  Getting a strong majority to agree that people's liberties should be limited without having committed a crime, that people with mental illness should be proactively monitored or incarcerated, or that people should be at the mercy of criminals without any self-defense seems like an inherently impossible task.  

So we are left with people advocating for public policies which will not solve the problem about which we are concerned.  We are left with being profoundly unserious.