A Sad Statement for America

Less than a week after I posted that I would be focusing primarily on the beautiful things in life, an article by Bob Herbert, Op-Columnist for the NYT, hit me right between the eyes. There's no way that I could read it, shrug my shoulders and go back to taking photos.

Ten days ago three police officers were killed by a 22 year old gunman wearing a bulletproof vest and armed with a variety of weapoons, including an AK-47 assault rifle. They were responding to a disturbance at the house. The young man's grandmother told Herbert there was no mercy for what her grandson had done. But as Herbert says, mercy or not, there is no end to the trauma and heartbreak caused by these horrifying, blood-drenched eruptions of gun violence, which are as common to the American scene as changes in the weather.

On the same day that shooting took place, a man here in Washington, shot his five children to death and then killed himself. A day earlier, a man in New York, invaded a civic association and shot 17 people, thirteen of them, fatally and then he killed himself. Three days after the shootings in Pittsburgh and Graham, Washington, a man with a handgun in Alabama murdered his wife, their 16-year-old daughter, his sister and his sister's son, before killing himself. And there's more, there's always more.

After all, this is the American way. Since Sept. 11, 2001, when the country's attention understandably turned to terrorism, nearly 120,000 Americans have been killed in non-terror homicides, most of them committed with guns. Think about it -- 120,000 dead! That's nearly 25 times times the number of Americans killed Iraq and Afghanistan!

And for the most part, we pay no real attention to this relentless carnage. The idea of doing something meaningful about the insane number of guns in circulation is a nonstarter. So what if eight kids are shot to death every day in America. So what if someone is killed by a gun every 17 minutes!

The goal of the National Rifle Association and a host of so-called conservative lawmakers is to get ever more guns into th hands of ever more people. Needless to say, Texas is one of a number of states considering bills to allow concealed guns on college campuses. Of course, supporters argue, among other things, that it will enable students and professors to defend themselves against mass murderers, like the deranged gunman who killed 32 people at Virginia Tech two years ago. These gun supporters would like guns to be as ubiquitous as laptops or cellphones. One Texas lawmaker referred to unarmed people on campuses as "sitting ducks."

This murderous gunfire claims many more victims than those who are actually felled by the bullets. But all the expressions of horror at the violence and pity for the dead and those who loved them ring hollow in a society that is neither mature nor civilized enough to do anything about it.

How many more have to be killed before we find a better way to deal with violence in this country other than making it even easier for more angry, mentally/emotionally disturbed and just plain stupid people to get guns?