The Nature of Things

If it is a day ending in y, it must be time for another mass shooting in America.  And what are the responses of our politicians, specifically the politicians running for president, to this carnage? Well, Hillary Clinton and Martin O'Malley have put forth plans for gun control. Bernie Sanders has been drafting one.  As for the Republican candidates, they all offer their "thoughts and prayers" to the victims, but no solutions, no ideas. They are waiting for God to fix it. The best headline of the week after the San Bernardino massacre was this from The Daily News of New York: God didn't make the problem; gun-worshiping humans did. And God won't fix it. On Earth, God's work must truly be our own. Meanwhile, "cowards who could truly end gun scourge continue to hide behind meaningless platitudes." They will all tell you what devout "pro life" Christians they are, but they refuse to do God's work in saving lives. They prefer to do the NR...

There really are no words to convey the horror. Another day, another massacre in the USA. This time most of the victims were children, babies really, barely even launched on the sea of life. The other victims were people who had dedicated their lives to helping children like them get launched. The sadness simply overwhelms me and, I am sure, most parents, who understand the images that the parents of those twenty children who died must live with for the rest of their lives. There is no way to mitigate the pain. The killing of so many innocents in one place at one time certainly gets our attention and grabs all the headlines for a few days, but the truth is that this many people die most days in this country as a result of being killed with a gun. Some 10,000 deaths per year occur in the United States because of gun violence. And what is our response? Why, to make guns more widely available and easily accessible , of course. The response of many of the gun nuts to yesterday's trage...