And Again

 It didn't stop. 

It never stops. 

I just stopped writing about it for a while. 

Four people died in Fordyce, Arkansas last week when a grocery store parking lot became a free-fire zone. Shoppers and store employees ducked or ran for cover as going down to the store to pick up a few things became a life or death situation. 

If this sounds familiar, that's because it is. It was May 2022 that a lone gunman killed ten people and wounded another three starting in the parking lot and working his way inside the store where he was eventually apprehended. Before that in March 2021, ten people were shot and killed in and around a grocery store in Boulder, Colorado. 

The carnage in Fordyce wasn't as extensive as its predecessors, and the wag in me suggests that it may be all the active shooter drills that have been put in place over the past few years in grocery store parking lots across this great land of ours. 

Too soon? 

Too late? 

Thoughts and prayers continue to be the best our government seems to be able to muster in the meantime. The motive at the time of the shooting was unclear, as it so often is, but perhaps there is a thread here that needs to be taken up: The capacity for generating thoughts and prayers may be at the bottom of all of these seemingly random acts of violence. 

What is potentially even more terrifying is the looming shadow of what might happen if things don't go a certain way once sentencing of the convicted felon and his train wreck of a campaign continues to generate more threats than thoughts or prayers. 

It won't stop. 

Let us pray.