We can’t even go one week into the school year without someone losing their life. Three days, to be exact. That’s how long Cherokee County, South Carolina, made it before Jomiltron Sentell Fair Jr., a 17-year-old senior at Gaffney High School, was shot dead a few feet from his own front door.

You can’t even walk to the school bus without worrying about being shot because this shooting wasn’t inside a school. It wasn’t during a graduation or a football game or any of the settings we’ve trained ourselves to brace for. It was 6:49 in the morning, on a residential street, while a kid was climbing the steps onto a bus full of his classmates.

Fair had walked across the street from his apartment to the bus stop, the same routine he’d apparently done a hundred times before. He was about to board the bus when a male approached him. There was a short altercation. Then there was a gunshot, and Fair was pronounced dead on the pavement in front of fifteen of his classmates, who watched it happen.

Somewhere in the middle of that altercation, Fair’s phone was taken. Cameras on the bus caught the shooter running off to a car that was already waiting, driven by someone else who knew exactly when and where to be.

It took investigators less than two days to round up everyone involved. A swarm of local, state, and federal agencies pulled together a response that included drones, a helicopter, K-9 units, and something like sixty to seventy officers combing the perimeter just to catch one of the three. 17-year-old Reginald Louis Barnes Jr. was picked up this past Wednesday night and is being held without bond. 18-year-old Keveon Ken’Dre Covington ran when police showed up looking for him and spent the better part of a day being tracked near a walking trail before they finally cornered him. A 16-year-old, whose name authorities won’t release because he’s a juvenile, was picked up separately in nearby Spartanburg County. All three now face murder charges and weapons charges tied to a violent crime.

What nobody has told us yet is why. Sheriff Steve Mueller said at a press conference that investigators believe this was “an isolated incident between parties that knew each other.” That’s the kind of phrase officials reach for when they want you to feel safe without actually telling you anything.

That doesn’t answer the question I keep coming back to, which is what possible grievance a group of teenagers could have that ends with one of them dead in front of a bus full of witnesses and a battery of cameras. If this was personal, and every signal so far says it was, then somebody decided to settle a personal score in the most public and least deniable way possible. That’s not someone thinking clearly. That’s someone who either didn’t care if they got caught or never seriously believed they would.

I’ve read several different reports on this shooting now, and not one of them has asked the most important question going forward. Where did the gun come from? Not one story, not one press conference, not one quote about “senseless violence.” Everybody wants to talk about the manhunt. Nobody wants to talk about how an 18-year-old and a 17-year-old ended up with access to a firearm in the first place. So let’s talk about it, since apparently no one else will.

Under federal law, an 18-year-old cannot walk into a federally licensed gun dealer and legally buy a handgun. But under South Carolina law, that same 18-year-old can buy a handgun from a private seller with zero background check, zero waiting period, and zero legal obligation on the seller’s part to ask a single question about who they’re handing a loaded weapon to.

In South Carolina, teenagers can’t be trusted to buy a handgun over the counter, but it’s perfectly fine for that same teenager to get one in a parking lot from a stranger. How backwards is that? The federal government built a law with a locked front door, and the state opened a back window. Then everyone acts surprised every time someone climbs through it.

(Sources)

• Gaffney student identified after deadly shooting at bus stop days into new school year
• High-schooler reportedly killed in bus stop shooting in South Carolina
• Second suspect arrested in shooting at school bus stop in Gaffney that left one dead
• 3 teens charged with murder in shooting death of Gaffney High School student at bus stop