@&#! the NRA!

Another day in America. At least seventeen killed at a high school in Parkland, Florida, named Florida's safest city in 2016. This is the 18th school shooting of 2018. Ho-hum. The "price of freedom in America."

Friends of ours just moved to a new home a mile from that school. If it weren't for the fact that their daughter does online school to give herself time for tennis, she'd have been at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School today. And sweet, little Rachel may have become another sacrificial lamb to the NRA's interpretation of Second Amendment Rights.

The NRA thinks the solution to mass shootings is to arm everyone, because the only thing better than lots of shootings is even more of them. Can you imagine the situations that would arise? Someone opens fire in a crowded theater. Two hundred people draw their guns, and, through the smoke, try to identify the shooter. It must be one of the other couple of hundred people waving their guns around, so mow down whomever you think fired the first shot. Oh, too bad! First, you nailed the wrong person, and then someone assumed you were the original shooter and enthusiastically shot you. Oh, and let's prevent school shootings by arming all teachers, because 40 extra guns floating around a school is such a good idea. Of course, teachers never get careless and leave their guns lying around, would never have their guns taken from them by force, or would never themselves lose control and shoot that annoying kid who keeps challenging their authority (of course, they could always fall back on "stand your ground" if that were to happen.)

But it's so not cricket to talk about guns just because they're used to kill people. How unbecoming! How inappropriate to politicize a tragedy!

What happened to data driven policymaking? When an airplane crashes, we research the event and find out what could be done to prevent similar tragedies in the future. When a bunch of innocent people are mowed down by a killer with an AR-15, we're supposed to mutely accept the situation because Second Amendment rights???

Let's stop throwing around terms like "prolife" (you're not prolife if you support the gun lobby and oppose universal healthcare) and "party of death" (no, people who support gun control are not pro-death baby killers with blood on their hands; you're thinking of those who would pretend Sandy Hook was a hoax.)

Isn't supporting life and human flourishing kind of what we all want?

😡 and 😢