By the time I finished writing my blog post on the tragedy in Parkland, Florida, on Thursday evening, I was not yet aware of the monumental FBI screw up in this case. When that news spilled forth the next day, I was distressed but not surprised. This is not the first time the FBI has ignored warnings from the public that could have saved dozens of lives. So in addition to the other non-gun control problems we face in coming to grips with the mentally ill perpetrating gun violence in our society, we can add “fixing the FBI” to the list.
Some people have used the FBI role in the tragedy to make partisan political points. Ann Coulter, for example, has said that if the FBI had not been obsessed with trying to bring down the Trump presidency, it might have spared some time to take warnings about Nikolas Cruz seriously. Of course, this is an obscene remark of the sort of remark we have come to expect from Coulter. But she is not the only one to miss the point about what is going on here. Florida Governor Rick Scott called the behavior of the FBI in this case “unacceptable,” and called on Director Christopher Wray to resign. (With the Nunes memo business, it's sort of amazing that the Director hasn't resigned already anyway, but that's another story.) What we really have here with the Governor, and others, is a slightly more civilized form of political posturing. Governor Scott gives no evidence of understanding what the underlying problem is. He seems to think it's a simple matter of outing the failed employee. Alas, it's not so simple.
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