Guns

 We are a nation with an estimated 400 million guns in the hands of private citizens. We are thus, each and every day, only a moment away from another spontaneous combustion.

The massacre in Texas, following in the aftermath of the horrendous calamity in Buffalo, following in, following in, following in.... What we don't address is the forest for the trees.

We have lost all touch with sanity in our reply to the pandemic of death that lays in the wake of our massively misdirected approach to this our nation's great shame. We speak of deleting of AR-15's from our vocabulary, of background checks, of raising the minimum age to legally purchase the right to kill, of so many matters, while valid, that will do absolutely nothing to alter the basic mathematics that doom us to unrelenting horror.

We lose about 45,000 each year to death by shooting. It is a simple statistical calculation. We cannot, we will not, stop this plague unless and until we resolve to remove the proliferation of these weapons of mass destruction from the general population.

The Second Amendment is what we allow it to be. It is not, as we have now seen, a static set of rules and regulations, that can be followed without our further input, and serve as a dictate for do's and don'ts. It can grow larger, or shrink to nothing. It is within our capacity to alter the landscape

One day, some day, someone will take on the NRA and all the gun advocates without camouflage. Without trying to work the edges. Without tinkering here and there. One day, some day, someone will have the courage to say that enough is far, far too much. That this is not the Wild West. This is not the 1800's. That we don't need gunslingers. That we don't need individuals declaring war on their spouse, on their neighbor, on someone, on anyone because of color, religion or sexual orientation, or any other irritation or aggravation that results in extinguishing a life.  Not in a bar, not in a nightclub, not in a street fight, not in road rage, not from a rooftop, not in a supermarket, not in a movie theatre, or in a church or a synagogue, or a restaurant or a mall, or a subway car or a school filled with children. And not on ourselves, in a moment of great sorrow, anger or depression. That possession of guns is a privilege.. And that we have abused that privilege past the point of all reason.

One day can not come soon enough. But I don't know when. And I fear I don't know how.