Making sense of that which makes no sense

If I thought banning guns would prevent any more children from being slaughtered in their elementary school classrooms, I would say let us repeal the Second Amendment and get to it.

If I thought arming teachers would prevent any more terrified high schoolers from having to hide under a cafeteria table believing the next bullet will end up in their head, I would say let us require military training for a teaching certificate and eliminate football programs if necessary to afford the arsenal.

If I thought reintroducing organized prayer into public schools would create an environment where never again would a teacher hear that dreadful popping sound down the hall and have to lock her door and herd her students into a closet, then I would say make everyone bow their heads and pray to some God, any God, or just fake it, every morning. 

If I find any or all of these views to be hopelessly, even dangerously, naïve and simplistic, it's not in me right now to mock any of them. As all of us try to make sense of that of which no sense can be made, it is natural to grasp for something, anything, that fits our worldview.

In any case, I suspect that whatever our individual opinions on these issues -- more guns, fewer guns, prayer in schools, no prayer in schools -- most of us would accede to the exact opposite if we knew it would mean no more parents waiting for police to show them a picture of a dead child on a classroom floor to confirm what they already know in their forever-broken hearts.

As we all practice armchair sociology and criminology at times like these, asking ourselves why this keeps happening and even as we come to different conclusions and thus different solutions, I suspect we all know in our hearts that this is far more complicated and more terrifying than our initial knee-jerk reactions imply:

There's a sickness in our culture, maybe a desensitization to violence, maybe an acceptance of moral rot and decay, maybe ... I don't know.  This sickness often is expressed with guns, but those are merely the tools, not the cause.  

These no longer can be called "isolated incidents." This is part of what America is. Not all, or even most, but definitely part of us.

How did this happen?

Maybe I'll write more about this later, but honestly, I got nothing right now.