A troubled boy, sporting a "make America great again" cap, spews hatred and murderous fantasies on social media. He boasts of his arsenal of guns, and shares pictures. There were warning signs everywhere, but now 17 young people are dead. The boy is in custody.
A troubled man, over a year ago, announced to the world that he could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot someone and nobody would care. He promises to make America great again, and he tucks his bizarre orange hair into his signature cap. There were warning signs everywhere, but now our country has become a laughing stock. The man is in the Oval Office. Except when he is on the golf course.
The political finger pointing has begun in earnest, but the truth is we are all to blame, in varying degrees. Our attention spans are short, and we become desensitized all too quickly. Grainy videos of teenagers being led out of school like criminals, hands up over their heads. News reporters asking parents the most ridiculous questions -- how did it feel when you stopped receiving text messages from your child? Your child who was hiding in a closet with twenty-five schoolmates and a teacher who was supposed to know how to keep everyone safe and calm because she had done a few drills? Did you ever think it could happen here? Here. Where you are, precisely because bad things don't happen.
Two years ago, I met a lady whose grandchildren were at Sandy Hook Elementary School when twenty young children and six teachers were murdered. Life had gone on, for her, but she was forever changed. I vaguely remember the outrage, five years ago. I remember how certain we all were that something would would have to give, that rifles would no longer be as accessible as a carton of milk. I donated once, to a a charity set up in a dead Connecticut child's name, and I occasionally receive a new solicitation. The picture of the beautiful child haunts me, the frozen in time snapshot of a life's worth of lost promise. I ache for his parents. I wonder why nothing has changed, and I donate again. And I move on to wring my hands about something more immediate and petty. Desensitized.
Florida's governor, the guy who firmly stated, two years ago, that the Second Amendment doesn't kill people, said he would do what he could do to keep kids safe. "We cannot let this pass without making something happen that hopefully, and it's my goal that this will never happen again in my state." Whatever that sentence means. Not once would he acknowledge that gun control would be part of the solution. Nope, guns are not the problem. Apparently, as far as Governor Scott is concerned, the FBI director is the problem, because he actually admitted that somebody in the FBI dropped the ball. Aha! Guns don't kill people. The Second Amendment doesn't kill people. The FBI director kills people. Never mind that we will never know how many people are saved, every day, when the ball does not get dropped.
If this happens again, if another troubled individual with a legally acquired rifle manages to commit mass murder in a school or at a concert or in a nightclub or anywhere, we are all complicit. Just as we were complicit, by virtue of our sheer apathy, in allowing a big buffoon in a Make America Great Again cap to sit in the White House, the house that slaves built. Just as we are complicit, by virtue of our inaction, in allowing him to stay there, while a never ending laundry list of crimes and misdemeanors seem to roll off his Teflon hide. Enough is enough.
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