Sandy Hook Ten Years Later

America is no better, but in fact worse off since the tragic shooting.

Ten years ago, the United States of America continued hurtling toward the moral abyss.

The Sandy Hook school shooting was not the first school shooting in our country.

But so far, it’s the worst.

For now.

Twenty six people – twenty kids and six adult staff members, died that day.

Family members have not only had to live with the unimaginable tragedy of losing their loved ones, but with ridiculous conspiracy theories charging that it didn’t happen.

Ten years later, nothing has changed.

Except more people have died.

More school shootings.

Twenty two school shootings in the last ten years.

Almost seventy children killed.

And that’s just school shootings.

That’s not counting church shootings, grocery store shootings, and shootings just about every place where large groups congregate.

But we can’t solve the problem.

Because all we need are more people carrying guns.

We need more “good guys with guns.”

We need tighter security at schools.

We need to arm teachers.

We need to cut down on violent video games.

We need God back in our schools.

We need everything and anything.

Except sensible, logical, common sense gun control laws.

If the Uvalde Police Department were afraid to engage one armed shooter, why would anyone think that an educator or group of educators would be able to engage and neutralize a threat?

It’s not that the problem is too complex, because the solution is fairly simple.

It’s not that we don’t have the will to tackle the problem. Every iota of logic says that whatever needs to be done to protect our children should be done.

What prevents us from enacting meaningful gun control is this country’s revolting love of guns.

American gun culture regularly elevates guns and gun ownership to the same plane of Christian worship.

To these people, gun ownership is a sacrament like baptism and Communion.

They have been fed the myth of “rugged individualism” so long that they can’t act in the best interest of others.

They feel emasculated if they can’t buy handheld weapons of mass destruction.

They are enraged that anything might cause them to lose their fantasies of being John Wayne, Dirty Harry, or Rambo.

They are the definition of human toxicity.

And they are our relatives, friends, and neighbors.

Our coworkers.

Our fellow churchgoers.

The dead of Sandy Hook cry from well-tended graves.

Their blood is not only on the hands of the twenty year old man who shot and killed them.

It’s on my hands.

It’s on your hands.

It’s on the hands of everyone who fails to act so that one day, there will be no more mass shootings.

No more bloodbaths.

No more unrecognizable children’s bodies.

No more excuses.