The Santa Cruz Sentinel on how to end the pandemic of school gun violence:

Another day, another mass shooting.

Another school shooting, this one at Michigan State University, which killed three students and wounded five others and came almost five years to the day since the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High massacre in Parkland, Fla.

And while the victims and those who escaped another senseless spasm of violence from a disturbed shooter might have been older, the parade of grieving parents and friends, bewildered family, and feckless local laws were all too familiar.

Consider that the number of children in the U.S. who have endured a shooting at a K-12 school since 1999 has continued to climb, to a staggering 338,000. This figure is according to a database developed by Washington Post reporters Steven Rich and John Woodrow Cox over the five years since Parkland.

Each shooting has become synonymous with its death toll. At Columbine High in Littleton, Colo., it was 13. At Marjory Stoneman Douglas: 17. At Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas: 21. At Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn.: 26. And so many who lived through shootings will endure the trauma for the rest of their lives.

Despite so many school murders over the past two decades, 2022 was the worst year of school shootings in history. Encompassing 46 acts of violence during school hours, 34 students and adults died while more than 43,000 children were exposed to gunfire at the places they go to learn and grow, according to Rich and Cox, who also note that gun violence soared during the pandemic.

In a country where gun violence is the leading cause of death for kids and teens, millions of children must walk through metal detectors or run through active-shooter drills meant to prepare them for the threat of mass murder.

Rich and Cox also say that contrary to popular belief that shooters are mostly white, angry, having been bullied and heavily armed, there is no archetype. After assessing 300-plus shooters, they found the three youngest were 6 years old (including the child accused last month In Virginia of firing a bullet at a teacher), and the oldest, 74.

Many shooters do share similar attributes, though. Most are male. The median age is 16. The overwhelming majority show no signs of debilitating mental illness, such as psychosis or schizophrenia.

The worst incidents, according to the reports, were mostly carried out with semiautomatic rifles or shotguns, but a single handgun was the weapon of choice 80% of the time. In 86% of the cases examined, the children found the guns in the homes of their friends, relatives or parents. There are hundreds of millions of privately owned weapons in the U.S. and if a would-be shooter wants a gun, they can usually find one somewhere.

Amid the carnage — and this includes California workplace shootings such as Half Moon Bay and Monterey Park — new calls for legislation are sounded.

Until this past summer, when Congress passed a gun-safety bill for the first time in decades, federal lawmakers had done virtually nothing to address the problem.

But the shootings continue.

No single solution will end the violence. But much still can be done.

Lacking any current means to keep guns away from potential shooters, a few measures should be mandatory: Every school should be able to quickly lock its doors, a basic security function many campuses still lack.

People who have heard shooters talk about their plans need to immediately alert authorities.

Better background checks to waiting periods before purchase to red-flag laws, and programs such as government gun buybacks and gun licensing are essential, as is prosecuting dealers who allow their supply to flow to illegal markets.

This is a pandemic of violence and it’s long past urgent for all states and the federal government to treat it as such.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal on how Biden’s economic agenda is no help to the middle class:

Has there ever been a more hollow political promise than Joe Biden’s vow not to raise taxes on anybody making less than $400,000 a year?

During his State of the Union address earlier this month, the president reiterated this vow while proposing a new tax on the very wealthy to ensure they pay their “fair share.” Never mind that the top 1% of all wage earners account for more than 42% of all federal income tax collections.

This is a cut-and-paste off Page 1 of “The Dummy’s Guide to Democratic Talking Points,” yet it is remarkable that progressives get away with leaving their amorphous definition of “fair share” simply floating in the air. Would it be fair if Washington took 50 percent of all your earnings? Seventy-five percent? What would be “fair”?

Regardless, the point the president desperately hopes to make is that he’s targeting only the bank accounts of fat cats — the other guys — and Joe Sixpack has no reason to cling to his wallet. Oh, if only that were the case.

While Mr. Biden hasn’t yet signed any legislation that directly increases taxes on average Americans, his economic policies have had a similar effect. Under this administration, inflation soared to 40-year highs, evoking memories of the Carter White House. While rising prices — which act as a punitive tax on the middle class and poor — have slowed somewhat in recent months, the inflation rate remains triple what Mr. Biden inherited and continues to punish consumers.

In September, NerdWallet estimated that the average U.S. household “would have to spend an extra $11,500 this year in order to maintain the same standard of living as previous years.”

To fight inflation, the Federal Reserve has imposed a series of interest rate hikes. This has made money much more expensive, further burdening buyers unable to pay cash for homes and other large-ticket items — none of which helps those making less than $400,000. Rising credit card interest rates, for instance, will sap resources from Americans carrying large amounts of consumer debt, many of whom will struggle to make even minimum payments.

“It is a bleak irony that those hit hardest by inflation — lower and moderate-income Americans — may also be harmed most by the Fed’s actions to bring prices down,” Charisse Jones of USA Today noted in October.

Mr. Biden may have technically fulfilled his tax pledge so far — although White House efforts to raise corporate taxes would result in higher costs for all wage earners. But that’s small solace to Americans who have seen their standard of living eroded thanks to this president’s frequent fiscal fumbles.