American Insanity

The numbers are mind-numbing: More than 430 people have been shot in 273 school attacks since the one at Sandy Hook Elementary in 2012. Three of the 10 deadliest mass shootings in modern U.S. history were in the last five months. NYTimes 2 15 18

YOU WAKE UP in the morning, get your children dressed for school, make sure they have lunch, check to see if there are any special activities for the day, get yourself ready for work, and offer a prayer that your child will not be murdered in school that day by a gunman with a military style assault rifle.

Ask in any democracy in the world, and the people will tell you, "Americans are insane. They prefer guns over lives." Even in cultures like Israel's, where people own guns, they have gun control laws that prevent these constant murders.

My elderly neighbor actually argued with me that he could use a gun if the government went rogue. Really? That's your fear? You prefer indulging your paranoia and fantasy over protecting real children's lives, or actually coming home from a concert alive and not murdered by a man with an assault rifle equipped with a bumpstock in a nearby hotel. Really?

So, I have no hope of changing the American insanity, at least not until voters tire of kissing their children goodbye in the morning, not knowing whether the next time will be in a coffin.

Think about those families who lost their hopes and dreams, whose lives are shattered beyond repair, whose entire existence was ripped away by a man who is 19 and at 18 could legally buy an assault rifle.

We love our guns more than our neighbors or their children. More than our own children.

What is the matter with us?

(PS -- Anderson Cooper just interviewed some fool Senator who argued that it's difficult to know how to make the U.S. safe. After all -- how do you define an assault weapon? Really? Every other democracy is doing it easily. If you're too ignorant to figure it out yourself, ask somebody -- like we tell our children. ANYONE ELSE TIRED OF THE INTERVIEWS WITH LIARS AND CON-MEN, bought and paid for by gun interests, who control whether our children will live to adulthood and who care nothing for our lives?)