Again. The barbaric, grotesque redundancy of it. Another slaughter of the children.

Although there is a tendency for what is now a rich tradition of massacres in our society to blend in name, location, numbers of victims and dates of occurrence, as mass murder with AR-15 type rifles have perversely become a part of our societal landscape, the ones involving children stand out in bold, bloody detail.

Newtown Connecticut, December 14th, 2012. 20 year old Adam Lanza shot and killed 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Of the 26, 20 were children between six and seven years old. February 14th, 2018, at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland Florida, 19 year old Nikolas Cruz killed 17 people, 14 of them students, with 17 seriously injured. And now again. Uvalde Texas, May 24th, 2022, at Robb Elementary School, Salvador Rolando Ramos shot to death 19 students and two teachers, and wounded 17 others.

All three of these massacres (and let’s stop white washing them as tragedies, as if they were an act of god or nature) share a common thread: The killers were White or Hispanic males ( let’s dispense with non-binary gender pronouns i.e “they” or “them”- stick with him and he) between 18 and 20; no criminal records, but red flags galore of serious anti-social mental heath issues via social media and parental statements, and all perpetrated their carnage with AR-15 type semi-automated rifles.

My intent is not to analyze or dissect the myriad failures of law enforcement in the Uvalde massacre, or analyze the psychotic flotsam who did the killings at the three schools. And if I hear once more that “The System” failed the killers, I might literally puke on my computer screen. The days of limp-dick liberalism arguing that these poor young men are victims in their own right because insufficient hugs or too early potty training turned them into monsters should be forever debunked as the psycho-babble that it is. Perhaps these homicidal little bastards were simply bad seed- born evil, inherent and undetectable in a M.R.I. .

Some basic questions: why is it more difficult to obtain a driver’s license than it is for an 18 year old to purchase an AR-15? Ramos bought two within weeks of each other. Total lunacy. The other industrialized countries are baffled by our laissez faire gun culture. But I don’t want to get bogged down in how other countries perceive us. How we perceive ourselves is more important.

If substantial gun law reforms were ever to be made it would have happened after Sandy Hook. Why? I’m not writing this to be politically correct, I’m writing this to be honest and heartfelt. The Sandy Hook victims were first graders, the youngest of all the child victims, their parents were relatively well off and their kids were White. But all efforts to enact even minor changes in the gun laws were stifled. Why? Because of Republicans in the house and senate unable to stand up to the NRA and the gun manufacturers’ lobby. Fast forward ten years and it’s the same story and the same pitiful bleating from the Republicans- thoughts and prayers go out to the victims’ families, or pea brained ideas like arming the teachers. At Uvalde, the school was surrounded by highly trained heavily armed law enforcement. They failed to protect. I doubt grammar school teachers with side arms would fare any better.

How, I ask, is raising the age to 21 to purchase an AR-15, expanding background checks and forging reasonable red flag laws a diminution of the Second Amendment? You know who agrees with me? Well over half of the American people.

And so I say to Ted Cruz, one of the NRA’s more embarrassing concubines, and all of his other gutless, feckless ilk in the house and senate who whorishly fall to their knees before their NRA pimp- a pox on all of your houses.