When is it going to stop?

 I had hoped and planned to write a blog entry about the final episode of This Is Us, and I may do that at some other point.

Today, my heart is too heavy to share those thoughts.

Instead, I find myself with a heart broken for 21 families in Uvalde, Texas, a place that until yesterday I only knew as the birthplace of entertainer Dale Evans and hometown of US Vice President John Nance Garner (who famously described the office of Vice President as “a bowl of warm spit”.)

As I understand the story, the 18-year-old shooter crashed his car in the parking lot of Uvalde’s Ross Elementary School, and then — dressed in body armor, like the shooter in Buffalo 10 days (?!) ago — ran into the school, barricaded himself into a fourth grade classroom, and started shooting. 

Nineteen children in that classroom died. So did both of their teachers. 

It took an off-duty Border Patrol agent to stop the killing.  At the risk of his own life, he ran into the school and shot the shooter. The agent was wounded.

In order to identify the bodies, parents had to be swabbed for DNA because the bodies were so riddled with bullets that it was possible the parents would not recognize them. 

Last night, Joe Biden, angry and heartbroken, demanded to know, when are we going to put a stop to all this carnage?

I have two simple words, Mr. President:

We aren’t. 

My son was two months old when Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold ran into Columbine High school and murdered 12 students and a teacher before killing themselves in the school library. 

He turned 23 in February. 

Nothing has changed. 

We “lather, rinse, repeat” with our “thoughts and prayers”, give ideas about what we should do, yell at each other on social media (and sadly, I have seen Christians do this to each other) . . . and then it all dies down until the next mass shooting.

According to an article at newsnationnow.com, the US has had more than 200 mass shootings so far this year. Their statistics come from the Gun Violence Archive.  The Gun Violence Archive (at gunviolencearchive.org) defines “mass shooting” as “four or more people shot or killed, not including the shooter.” There is no one accepted definition of  “mass shooting”, and the GVA website mentions that even the FBI does not define “mass shooting”. 

I don’t have the energy right now to figure out how many mass shootings have happened between Columbine and now, how many hundreds of people killed, wounded, traumatized for life.  I’m selfishly glad that my son is no longer in school. But he works in a supermarket. The Buffalo shooter shot up a supermarket. My family attends church weekly. One of the most recent mass shootings happened in a church in California. And I can think of at least two or three more that happened in churches. 

Last night, Joe Biden demanded to know when we were going to stand up to the gun lobby. 

In 1968, when Robert Kennedy lay on an operating table after being shot in the head, ABC broadcaster Howard K. Smith made editorial comments about gun control and about how powerful the gun lobby was. 

That was 54 years ago.

Nothing has changed. 

The gun lobby remains as powerful as ever. 

British columnist Dan Hodges commented on Twitter in 2015 that Sandy Hook marked the end of the gun control debate. “Once America decided killing children was bearable, it was over.” 

I am at the end of my rope. Like a counselor friend of mine has said, I’m exhausted. I do not want to be fearful when I go to church or to a grocery store. 

But as long as “my freedom,” “my liberty”, and “my rights” are trumpeted over our responsibility to society at large — especially its most vulnerable members, the children, elderly, and disabled — we will see this happen over and over again. 

This morning, I listened to a Christian radio station waiting for the top of the hour news update. The song playing asked, did God move every mountain? Yes, he did. So he can. 

And all I could think of was how hollow that must ring in the ears of the 21 families whose children and loved ones will not come home, ever again; whose resting place will be underneath a gravestone or in a columbarium, or in scattered ashes. 

When, dear God, does it stop? 

When will Rachel stop weeping for her children? 

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.