A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. Second Amendment to the US Constitution.

Our nation is shocked and saddened by the news of the shootings at Virginia Tech today. President George Bush after the Virginia Tech shooting

We cannot and will not be passive in the face of such violence. We should be willing to challenge old assumptions in order to lessen the prospects of such violence in the future. President Barak Obama after the Tucson shooting.

I can speak for all of the senators, congressmen and congresswomen, all of the people in this room that are involved in this decision, that we will act and do something. We will act. President Donald Trump after the Parkland shooting.

Another massacre: Uvalde, Texas – an elementary school, beautiful, innocent second, third, fourth graders. And how many scores of little children who witnessed what happened see their friends die as if they’re on a battlefield, for God’s sake. They’ll live with it the rest of their lives. President Joseph Biden after the Uvalde School shooting.

This is not who we are. America is better than this. President Joseph Biden this time but it could be anybody in power.

 Onward, Christian soldiers! Marching as to war, With the cross of Jesus Going on before. Christ, the royal Master, Leads against the foe; Forward into battle, See his banners go!… Onward, Christian soldiers! Marching as to war, With the cross of Jesus Going on before. a Christian hymn by Arthur Sullivan (1871)

“It’s impossible to pick up the paper or listen to the news on the radio and not get depressed.” I’ve been saying for months, years, really, but it is especially true now. Well, maybe especially true is the wrong way to put it, it was also true after a White eighteen-year-old male killed ten Black people in a grocery store in Buffalo, New York a couple of Saturdays ago. Now, it is true again, after another White eighteen-year-old male slaughtered nineteen children and two adults in a school in Texas. I saw a picture today that just wreaked me; small kids, grammar school age, lined up across from the NRA Convention, each holding a picture of another child who had been slaughtered by another child, a larger child, but still a child, really.

CNN said, “We may never know why a shooter gunned down 19 children and two teachers in a massacre Tuesday at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.” That’s wrong – I’m trying to resist saying “That’s bullshit.” – we do know. We know that a very disturbed young man thought the best way to solve his real and imagined problems is to kill people. Liberals will tell you that guns are the problem, not the violence in our culture or the breakdown of families, they are both right and wrong. Conservatives will tell you that guns are not the problem, the violence in video games, movies, and on TV is the problem along with the breakdown of the family and they are also both wrong and right.

We live in a culture that glorifies violence. Our public heroes – police officers, and people in the military – are the most violent people in our culture. Our press fetishizes Navy Seals sort of ignoring that they kill people for a living. Bruce Willis, as Police Detective Lieutenant John McClain, even killed ten people in Die Hard – all for a good cause, of course, because it was the only thing he could do to solve the problem – Die Hard! is considered a Christmas movie. From a very young age, we are subtly told violence solves problems, it certainly does in movies and video games. Our make-believe culture of violence is a big part of the problem of violence in our real culture.

At the latest NRA Convention, Ted Cruz said that guns were not the problem, broken families, absent fathers, and low church attendance were the problem. I don’t like Ted Cruz, however, I think Ted Cruz does have a point although I would change the causes to dysfunctional families, and absent and distracted parents. I even agree with Cruz on low church attendance but it is much bigger than that, it is the decline in membership in what I would call social clubs. By social clubs, I mean organizations nominally built around a particular interest or activity whose secondary function is the community it generates, including service clubs like the Lions and Rotary Clubs, sports clubs, hobby clubs as well as the community aspects of churches. The great majority – it is probably more accurate to say all – of mass killers are loners, feeling isolated.

To Cruz’s list of problems, I would add three factors that contribute to the background existential angst many Americans feel (maybe most Americans, even if it isn’t conscience). The loss of primacy in our society of White Christian males just because they are White, Christian, and male. The rise of a ruling elite, many of them rich beyond imagination, and the consequential fall and loss of power of the middle class. And for young people especially, Earth’s worsening climate. All of this while the adults in charge don’t seem to really care (after all, if you are over fifty, it is easy to think you will miss the worst of the coming disaster).

I don’t think that having a gun, per se, is the problem. I don’t even think that having an assault rifle is the problem. But, and it is a huge but, when a violent person feels unheard, is isolated and feeling alone, or feels unloved and unrespected, or is upset or is inraged, having a gun handy is a force multiplier and it is much easier to commit catastrophic damage. Having an assault rifle puts that catastrophic damage in a different league. AR15s are a perfect example: it weighs in at about six and a half pounds including twenty rounds in the clip while an old-fashioned hunting rifle, like a Remington Model 141 weighs just shy of eight pounds plus another five pounds for twenty rounds of ammo. The AR15 can accurately fire those twenty rounds in less than ten seconds and the damage caused by even one round of AR-15 ammo is so extensive that it is worthless for killing an animal for food. What it is not worthless for is killing people. That’s what it is designed for, killing people. If all the owner wants is to kill people, the AR15 is the perfect weapon.

Interestingly – which may not be the best word for something as ghoulish as guns and killing people – Switzerland has almost as many guns per capita as the United States and it has had zero mass shootings since 2001. As sort of an aside, I crossed through Switzerland by train in October 1988 and I was surprised at how many young men got on the train with assault rifles (and got off a stop or two later). I’ve been told they were Army reservists although it may have been Knabenschiessen which is a very popular, yearly, Swiss gun festival. End aside.

What is different is that Swiss gun owners are required to take background checks, take comprehensive yearly training with their weapons, and register both their guns and ammunition. In Switzerland, gun ownership is strictly controlled (you could even say well regulated ). In the United States, one can get enraged at an imagined insult, go out and buy a pseudo-assault rifle and kill somebody, or twenty somebodies, within an hour.

Lastly, I think that it is germane to point out that the NRA Convention does not allow guns at their meetings which should give you a good idea of what the NRA thinks of the wisdom of some idiot walking in with a loaded weapon.