Again and again

Happy Monday, friends.  If you have today off from work I hope you enjoy the day, and, if not, well, welcome to the club!  We had two of our local grandkids sleep over last night, since they were out of school, enjoying having them here.

But that's not what's on my mind this morning.

How many consecutive days has there been a report of some sort of mass shooting event somewhere in the United States?  As so often seems to happen, the Michigan State shooting incidents seem to have triggered some activity in workplaces and in family scenarios since that time.

Conspicuously absent this time has been the cascade of "thoughts and prayers," mostly from right-leaning politicians who are in deep with the NRA and other conservative causes.

And one of the more appalling aspects of what happened in Michigan is that some of the students at MSU had already been through a mass shooting event in their high school in Oxford, Michigan a couple of years ago, and one or more had also survived the massacre at Sandy Hook, Connecticut some years before that.

This is not a distinction anyone should want or aspire to receive.

I routinely as this when these things occur, but when will it end?  When will people stop trying to make apologies for people who certainly should have have ever been granted access to a firearm of any kind, let alone one with a large capacity to inflict much more carnage?  And when will those who know better stop trying to resolve domestic or workplace disputes with a gun?

As I state here regularly, my wife and I are blessed with two adult children and five grandchildren.  We have luckily been spared the agony of losing a loved one to gun violence, and I hope that remains the case.

But it's going to take more than people wishing for anything to change.