Well, the mass shootings continue. I think they’ve finally done it to me. I’ve become desensitized.
I know. It is a shameful thing to admit, but I confess.
And, I bet, in some ways, many of you have become desensitized too.
The other day, Mary and I were out walking, and she pointed out some Columbine growing. While it is a lovely plant, the word “Columbine” shot through me like it did on April 20, 1999. That mass shooting at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado.
Of course, we all remember how it occurred when those two teens conspired to go on a shooting spree. They killed 13 people and wounded more than 20 others. Finally, they turned their guns on themselves and committed suicide.
That was the first “mass shooting” in modern history of this magnitude at a school. A very well-thought-out plan of evil. And it shook the nation.
So there we were, 23 years ago. And. Everyone was mortified. Everyone cried out. “Never, never will we let this happen again. Not EVER again,” we all said.
Well, get this.
No. Really.
GET THIS:
At least 2,000 people have been killed or injured in mass shootings since 1999, when the Columbine tragedy occurred.
It’s getting more frequent by the minute.
So far, in 2022, there have been over 150 mass shootings in the United States.
If my math is right, that is more than once per day. One mass shooting per day, somewhere in the United States, that comes across our televisions and into our living rooms. Another line of text on the newscaster’s teleprompter, sliding down and off the screen.
And we stir our pot of beans at our kitchen stoves and shrug our shoulders. We shake our heads. And next, on the news, we hear “Tips for Spring Gardening. Coming up next, right after your local weather.”
That is where the desensitivity comes in.
Because we know, deep down inside, there is nothing we can do to change this. Zero. Zip. Nadda.
Oh sure. Call your Representative. I have.
Write your Congressman. I have.
Go to protests. In Preble County? They are as frequent as the great ice ages.
Get out and vote. I do.
Many of us have.
And look where we are.
It hasn’t changed because the people in power don’t want it to. More than that, they are actively doing everything they can to make SURE it never changes.
They don’t care about the lives that have been lost. They don’t give a flying flock about the children who are going to be killed by guns this year. The people in power don’t think of the victims as victims. They do not see their faces or hear their names. They are not lives. They are numbers.
I feel sorry for the victims. I feel sorry for their parents, who have spent countless hours grieving, and even more hours trying to change legislation, which is up to its armpits in gun-toting-Republican-cash.
How do they say it? “Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.”
Fine, if guns don’t kill people, then why do they need them to defend themselves and their homes as they wave their 2nd Amendment rights? If guns do nothing, then why do they need them at all/ According to their fuzzy logic about people killing people, why can’t they defend their homes with knives, and hammers, and blenders, instead of guns?
So yes, my friends. Forgive me.
I’ve become desensitized in the sense that I have no currency. No weight. No impact. No influence.
There’s not a thing we can do in a world filled with heartless, self-serving, entitled people who do not have the capacity for compassion.
All I can do is stir my pot of beans and wait, breathlessly, for those spring gardening tips, right after my local weather.
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“It’s all mirror, mirror on the wall because beauty is power the same way money is power the same way a gun is power.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters
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“Semi-automatics have only two purposes. One is so owners can take them to the shooting range once in a while, yell yeehaw, and get all horny at the rapid-fire and the burning vapor spurting from the end of the barrel. Their other use – their only other use – is to kill people”
― Stephen King, Guns
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“We do not need guns and bombs to bring peace, we need love and compassion.”
― Mother Teresa, The Joy in Loving: A Guide to Daily Living
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The shot heard round the world. Over and over and over again.
