Outrage

 In retrospect Sandy Hook marked the end of the US gun control debate. Once America decided killing children was bearable, it was over. 

Those aren't my words. And they aren't that recent, either. They come from English newspaper columnist Dan Hodges. Way back in 2015. They bounced around Twitter for a few years and landed neatly on my feed thanks to a very good friend with similar perspectives. They sat there in my head after I read them and mingled with a great many others, including those that might be dancing about your own mind as you read this: Again? Really? Is he going to talk about gun control?

Again?

Like the suggestion that now that we have a phrase in the English language that sounds like this: "The latest mass shooting." 

Let that one sink in, please. Not like "the latest rainstorm," but rather "the latest category five hurricane." As if there was a tolerable amount of lives lost to gun violence. Ten in Boulder, Colorado. Eight in Atlanta, Georgia. I could go on and on. I would really rather not. On the morning that I woke up with Mister Hodges' words bouncing about my head, they spilled out in front of my wife. And then I added the location of Wikipedia's list of mass shootings. As I stood there, she dialed it up on her phone. She sat for several minutes, transfixed. Every so often she would exclaim, or sigh, or wonder aloud. Which is pretty solidly the expectation I had when I offered up this information. "Some of these didn't even make the news!" she said at one point. 

And even if they did, they were crowded out by the next one. Which made me sad to think the light shone on my hometown of Boulder would soon be moved to the site of the next murderous rampage. And somewhere on the other side of the fence I could hear the voices scoffing, "Assault weapon? You could kill someone with a phone book. Does that mean we should outlaw phone books?" Or the words of Colorado's Representative Lauren Boebert who sent an email to her supporters just two hours after the massacre at King Soopers which read, in part:  the “radical gun-grabbing left” that it claimed is trying to “violate your due process and criminalize the private transfer of firearms.” The killer in Atlanta purchased his murder weapon five hours before he gunned down eight. The murderer in Boulder purchased his AR-15 six days before he cut down ten lives. The hew and cry, as always, comes from those "responsible gun owners" who would have to suffer under restrictions like background checks and mandatory waiting periods. This is their version of "grabbing guns." 

Good for Beto O'Rourke, by the way, for saying that he would do just that. 

It is also a sad note that the youngest of the victims in Boulder, twenty year old Denny Stong had asked friends to donate to the National Foundation for Gun Rights Inc. the week before he was murdered. On that organization's web site is this proclamation: "National Foundation for Gun Rights works to expand pro-gun precedents and defend gun owners. A tough-as-nails, no-compromise, pro-Second Amendment legal entity that is NOT afraid to fight!" I can't help but think that Denny lost his fight. 

And so have we. 

But does it have to be this way? How many more have to die in order to end this fight once and for all? I'm going to say "none."