Greensboro News & Record

A false alarm in a North Carolina school recently was a sober warning all the same: Serious gun-law reform in this nation is long overdue.

Preliminary news reports suggested a school shooting could be in progress at Topsail High School near Wilmington. At around 6:30 a.m. one morning, noises that sounded like gunfire were heard coming from a school building. Buses carrying students to school at that hour were diverted and parents were notified of the situation by tweet.

The campus was sealed and nearby police officers responded. It seemed as if our turn had finally come. Thankfully, there was no shooter and no weapon. A faulty water heater had produced sounds that resembled gunfire.

That was a relief. And a grim reminder that this could happen anywhere.

But who could be blamed for expecting the worst? The scenario had been all too real late Wednesday night in Thousand Oaks, Calif. Only two weeks after a man entered a Pittsburgh synagogue and fatally shot 11 people, a gunman entered a country music bar and killed 12 people, including a deputy who had rushed in to confront him.

The shooter, who was cold-blooded and methodical, also injured 18 before reportedly killing himself. He was identified as a 28-year-old Afghanistan war veteran, and he used a handgun equipped with an illegal, extra-capacity magazine. Several who were in the bar that night had seen this kind of horror at the 2017 country music festival in Las Vegas where a gunman killed 58 people from a perch in a hotel room.

As they keep happening, we look to our legislators, who express their condolences. And then we wait for the next one.