"....When will they ever learn?...."

Like just about everyone else in the country this morning, I am reeling and shell-shocked after yesterday, the worst and largest mass shooting in our country's history. It is ludicrous to try to apply logic to something that is so outside the bounds of normal, acceptable behavior. We try nonetheless. But there is simply no logical explanation for what happened yesterday.  A child is born, snuggled in his mother's arms, grows up, and whether due to poor parenting, a tragically miswired brain, or the cumulative effect of a million small hurts and injustices, he struggles with enough mental health issues that his solution is to massacre 20 small children and their protectors. Insanity.

There are as many reactions and explanations as there are citizens of this country, but none of them matter right this minute. What matters are the 26 families who have had normalcy eliminated from their lives, who have lost the bright light of a child or the love and leadership of a parent, whose lives can never be the same again. What matters are the survivors, children and responders, whose lives will never be the same again.  The innocence of those children has been snuffed, their future Christmases tainted if not ruined, their sense of trust and safety blown to bits. The responders - God bless their unbelievably brave souls - will be haunted by those images in their brains forever.  Such unspeakable violence is hideous enough when it happens to adults, as it mostly does; but the idea of 20 sweet little souls who were caught completely off-guard in the place that was a haven for them, huddled with their friends and teachers, is simply nauseating and beyond comprehension. And still we bicker back and forth about what constitutes personal freedom. Personally, I think no one needs to own assault weapons, whether they have that right or not. Why would anyone want an assault weapon except to wreak carnage? Don't tell me you'll use it in self-defense - that would require carrying it cocked and ready 24/7. Also ludicrous.

We have to stop being so obsessed with violence, with weaponry, with misplaced anger before we utterly and completely destroy our society. When will we admit that mutual destruction is not the answer, that if one innocent life is lost in the name of gun ownership, it is one too many? When will we value our children, not to mention ourselves, enough to say that their safety from randomly used weapons is worth relinquishing one's "right" to own guns?

This needs to end. Stop. Right now.  Here, today. No posturing, debating, invoking the 2nd amendment, or any other stupidity. Get rid of the guns, now. And stop murdering our children.

"Where have all the graveyards gone, gone to flowers, everyone....when will they ever learn? 

When will they ever learn?"