Shooting to Kill

Another mass shooting in America.

We adore our firearms.

Another disturbed man with semi-automatic weapons launches a rampage, killing his own mother, more than a dozen innocent children, and then himself. His motive is unknown. His weaponry was purchased legally.

Movie theatre. Shopping mall. Elementary school.

After the fact, our leaders and pundits wring their hands, call for action but when all the noise subsides, business will continue as usual. Politicians quake before the lobbying power of the NRA. Gun advocates frame the argument as “Gun Rights” instead of “Gun Control.” The venerable Second Amendment to the United States Constitution is trotted out as proof that Americans have an inalienable right to arm themselves to the teeth.

Nothing will change. We know that. We’ve seen this before, the grieving survivors, the TV psychologists, the politicians who claim that guns don’t kill people – people do. But if these people didn’t have such easy access to semi-automatic weapons or military-style weapons, they wouldn’t be able to kill ten or fifteen or twenty people in a fell swoop.

Movie theatre. Shopping mall. Elementary school.

If a public conversation comes, it will quickly descend into the usual arguments pushed by the usual advocates; what the president means by “meaningful action” will be parsed until it means nothing, and when both sides are finished spinning, the public will be confused and dazed, divided into opposing camps, until the next mass killing when this impotent process repeats itself.