Twenty Years After Columbine - Parkland

Before November of 2016, I was extremely proud to be an American.  Then, with three million less votes than his rival, the people in America somehow put an idiotic "reality" television personality into the White House.  The man runs a huge realty-based business, but has frequently declared bankruptcy; he has been fined multiple times for breaking the laws of this country, both personally and professionally; he "buys off" people who complain; and he has no background in government at all.  Yet he is in charge of "running" our country.  Less than a month after he entered office, this pile of crap made it much easier for people with a history of mental illness to purchase weapons.
   Yesterday was both Valentine's Day and Ash Wednesday.  Yesterday, in Parkland, Florida, about 45 miles north of Miami, a 19-year-old man walked into a school and killed 17 people.  That is the 18th time an armed person has discharged a weapon in a school since January first of this year.  The accused was an ex-student, who had been expelled from the school and not allowed to return "for disciplinary reasons."  His Mother had passed away last year, he had moved into a home with family friends, and they thought he was depressed due to his Mother's death.
  The young man was armed with an AK-15 type of automatic rifle.  How did he purchase it?  When did he purchase it? Why did he purchase it?  It was described as his "prized possession."  He used it to bring terror and death - 17 killed and 14 wounded...  And this is is 20 years after the Columbine shooting.  An AK-15 bullet can pierce the protective hardened metal helmet of a soldier at 500 yards.  Think of what a round can do up close and personal to a student or a teacher - the effect is similar to tiny grenades in one's body.
     It sickens me.
   Yesterday afternoon, on the Senate floor in Washington, D.C., our nation's capitol, the junior Democratic Senator from the state of Connecticut, Chris Murphy, spoke.  He was in Connecticut at the time of the shooting of the Newtown elementary school...  He said, "Turn on your televisions right now and you are going to see scenes of children running for their lives.  Let me just note, once again, for my colleagues: This happens nowhere else other than the United States of America.  This epidemic of mass slaughter, this scourge of school shooting after school shooting, it only happens here.  Not because of coincidence, not because of bad luck, but as a consequence of our inaction.  We are responsible for a level of mass atrocity that happens in this country with zero parallel anywhere else."
   The following is a quote from The New Yorker today:   "The key concept in that excellent peroration (Senator Chris Murphy's quote) was responsibility.  Even with the blood of defenseless children flowing along the corridors of schoolhouses, the U. S. Government has abdicated its duty to protect.  And that, it bears repeating ad nauseum, is a national disgrace."
     I agree completely.