Bullets and Blowhards


Another day, another shooting. People are going to rush to judgment, fingers will be pointed, pulpits will be pounded upon. The dead will be used as bricks in a wall built around our violently entrenched personal beliefs.

This is not a political site, and I don’t want it to be. But it’s impossible to look the other way when there are two high-profile shootings with multiple fatalities within days of each other.

There are discussions to be had about religious fundamentalism and what needs to be done about it.

There is something to be said about terrorism, foreign and domestic.

Maybe there’s even something to be said about our own society: how we don’t know each other, how we’re more and more isolated on our own islands, not knowing what lives in our neighbor’s hearts.

But let’s first of all take a look at a sickness in our country which is undeniably caused (or, at least, worsened) by such ready, easy access to guns, and let’s maybe, just maybe, not go straight to the assumption that the answer to the problem is more guns in the hands of more people.

JUMP-TO-CONCLUSIONS-MAT

And then, on the other hand, let’s go ahead and grant that guns in the hands of the right people are what brought this particular massacre to an early end.

Pray about it, if that’s your thing (but don’t forget that whoever or whatever you’re praying to allows this stuff to happen, day in and day out). But also recognize that the only thing that is going to stop tragedies like this (or, let’s be honest, lessen tragedies like this — people are people, after all) is by making it harder for the wrong people to get the guns. And that means we have a duty to vote against the cement posts in the ground who block any and all gun legislation at every turn.