DOMESTIC

VIOLENCE

TRAGEDY IN

MOUNT AIRY

A horrific domestic violence incident in Mount Airy has left all four members of a family in that town dead. The father was a Montgomery County Public Schools employee, the mother worked at a veterinary hospital in Damascus, and the family once lived in Olney. Police investigators have ruled the deaths as a murder-suicide.

This incident does not call for more of the predictable calls for gun control. Rather, it demands we examine the kind of proactive solutions I and others have advocated to stop domestic violence before it happens. Mental health issues, the ability of domestic violence victims (and adult women, in general) to carry a firearm, and long-overdue legal reforms will do more than red herring gun control laws to reduce violence against women and children.