Slipping

 Trying to make a case for the tragedy of gun violence here in the United States of America right now is a challenge. Hundreds and hundreds are being killed across the globe each day by weapons far more fierce and effective than handguns or even semi-automatic rifles. I would expect that if you were to drop by a village in Ukraine, or the remnants of a school in Iran, you might find it difficult to get a group discussion together regarding gun laws here in Estados Unidos. 

So, forgive me while I digress briefly into a problem that predates the Orange Worst.

Wouldn't it be amazing if a cease-fire would hold anywhere in the world? This past Sunday, a man in Shreveport, Louisiana shot and killed eight children between the ages of three and eleven. He wounded the mother of his seven children as well as her sister, the mother of the eighth child. A thirteen year old boy ran up the stairs and jumped from the building's roof. He has some broken bones, but is "expected to recover."

Those bones will knit, and the casts will be removed, but "recover" is a very big stretch. The father and murderer of those children fled, leading local police on a chase after a carjacking. He was shot and killed by authorities. 

And now the community in and around Shreveport begins the long journey back from that abyss. "Nothing like this has ever happened around here," said the locals who can no longer say that. Shreveport joins a long and unfortunate list of cities that never experienced anything like a mass shooting. 

Until now. 

There have been one hundred fourteen mass shootings in the United States so far this year. That's just a little over one a day. With numbers like that, how can there be any more communities to be scarred by gun violence? 

I am sad thinking that this kind of carnage has become background noise in the cacophony of the Second Trumpreich. Even sadder to think that gun violence has slipped even further down our list of priorities. When a convicted felon and alleged pedophile is running the country, can we afford to forget the innocent victims, aged three to eleven?