Here We Go Yet Again

     I've just learned about the deadly school shooting in Winder, Georgia that claimed at least four lives. Considering this happened right after schools opened up, I fear this is a phenomenon that will repeat just as it does every year.

      Every year, roughly 45,000 Americans die of gun violence. And every time there's a school shooting or a mass shooting anywhere, Republicans trot out the hoary "thoughts and prayers" bromide. But if there's a god up there, their prayers are going ignored.

      They also resort to the equally dog-eared argument that what's needed are more "good guys with guns", the accent placed on guns. But the United States is the only nation on earth in which there's more than one gun for every person. We make up 4% of the world's population yet we own half the world's guns (450,000,000 for 330,000,000 men, women and children. That's 1.2 guns for every American).

      Plainly, more guns and ammo isn't the answer.

      We turn every mass shooting into an opportunity to attack the party to which they're opposed (although one side is much more responsible for this than the other) and gun executives lick their chops and rub their hands at the thought of a post-shooting "bump" in sales.

      As the Onion once famously observed years ago, we keep saying there are no answers or solutions even though we're the only country on earth where this happens. There's a sickness in our culture, or what passes for one, in which the desperate clinging to the 2nd Amendment is predicated on "others" coming to get you. Gun rights are based on nothing more than blind, rabid fear.

      We are such a sad, sick country. We are the sick man of North America. The answer is within our grasp. But just as gun owners are often ruled by blind fear, lawmakers are also ruled by fear of doing the right thing.