Just let me lament!

Yesterday was the 18th school shooting in 2018.

This one killed 17 people.

Some of those 18 shootings include incidents where a gun was accidentally fired on campus.  But of the remaining, I don't know the number of casualties (horrible to use that word, as if I'm talking about a war, which maybe I am!) but ANY casualty of a school shooting is one too many.

Yesterday, 17 people died in a school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, in Broward County.  This comes on the heels of the January 23rd shooting at Marshall County High School in Benton, Kentucky, where two people died and 18 were injured.  Less than a month ago.

When does this madness stop?

My son was two months old when the news broke about Columbine.  Columbine was not the first school shooting, but it was the one that seared itself into the nation's consciousness.  We now refer to "since Columbine" or "post-Columbine".

This Sunday, my son turned 19.

We have learned nothing since Columbine.

The cycle has become all too familiar:  Someone opens fire on a school campus.  Children die.  People express shock and horror.  Thoughts and prayers go out to the victims.  The arguments about gun control start.  The speculation about the shooter's motives run rampant.  Eventually, everything dies down . . . only to start up again at the next school shooting.

I am truly in despair.

I see nothing changing and nothing ever getting any better.

I have my own questions about faith, about Christianity, and that is not helping matters any at all.

Right now, I just need to lament.

We have lost our way.  We are an angry, broken country and I am just waiting for the spark that will ignite the Second Civil War.  I sometimes feel that if I express my feelings and my opinions, I am the one that will be bashed, blamed, and shamed.  I am the one that has to change.  No one else does.  A close friend posted a meme about how good people voted for Clinton and good people voted for Trump--and she got such pushback from people, including members of her own family, that it made her cry.  And I have a problem when something makes a friend of mine cry. 

And nothing changes.

Lawmakers take the microphones and the floor of the House and Senate and pontificate about the need to keep our children safe . . . and nothing changes.  Nothing.

Fifty years ago, Robert Kennedy was shot, and in the coverage of the event, several commentators spoke of the need for gun control.  (I believe a bill about gun control was in Congress at the time, June, 1968.)  Fifty years.  Half a century.  And nothing has changed.

Yes, I can speak of the need for God, I can speak of need for changed hearts, I can speak of the need for individual change, I can listen to those who talk about faith and the need for faith, I can read the Bible and listen to Christian music . . . but right now, all of that is not going to help me.

Today, I believe only one thing can really help.

Just let me lament!

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.