Full Stop

 In between the time that we celebrated our Kindergarten promotion and our Fifth Grade promotion, there was time for nineteen students and two teachers to be promoted to heaven. Not on our campus, but down in Uvalde, Texas. It pains me in my head and in my heart. Children at an elementary school should be observing their last days of school before summer, not their last days on earth. 

At this point, the details become redundant. Eighteen year old. AR-15. Purchased legally. Social media posts. Innocents murdered. Innocence killed. Shock. Thoughts. Prayers.

Excuses. 

This should not be happening. Not a single one of those founding fathers so frequently referenced in Gun-Toter's Monthly imagined a weapon that could slaughter so many children. Meanwhile, the thoroughly predictable response from the tiny mind of a government official, this time offered up by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton: Arm teachers. This was his "best answer." 

Never mind that the eighteen year old loon with a semi-automatic rifle. Purchased legally. Never mind the fact that there are already enough guns for every man woman and child to have their very own here in the United States of the Second Amendment. Every day, three hundred twenty-one people are shot in the United States. Among those one hundred eleven people are shot and killed. Two hundred ten survive gunshot injuries. These numbers were essentially the same before this past two week span when three high-profile mass shootings took center stage. 

And we all pretended to be shocked. How could this happen? 

It's not a shock. Every man, woman and child has a gun in America. Haven't you heard? 

Albert Einstein once said that you cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for a war. This many guns is not preventing a war. And it won't bring back those kids in Texas. Or the one hundred eleven who will die by the end of the day. 

This is madness. It should have stopped long ago. 

It should stop now. Before someone else gets killed.