On Monday, March 27, six innocent souls were taken at a Christian school in Nashville Tennessee: three of them children. Immediately, the flood of thoughts and prayers was so overwhelming, it solved the problem in an instant.

We had decided as a nation we’ve finally gone too far.

I’m lying, of course. As I type this, it’s Wednesday morning in the Pacific Northwest, March 29, and already since Tuesday there have been 25 more people killed and 62 wounded by firearms in 77 new incidents. Further proof that thoughts and prayers have no effect, and further proof that, apparently, we feel we still have not gone far enough to warrant any preventive action.

Yesterday, the day after the students needlessly lost their lives in their school, Barry Black, a retired Rear Admiral who serves as the U.S Senate Chaplain spoke at the opening of that chamber’s business:

Lord, when babies die at a church school, it is time for us to move beyond thoughts and prayers. Remind our lawmakers of the words of the British statesman Edmund Burke: ‘All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.’ Lord, deliver our senators from the paralysis of analysis that waits for the miraculous. Use them to battle the demonic forces that seek to engulf us. We pray, in your powerful name, amen.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/03/28/us-senate-chaplain-tennessee-shooting/

Amen.

Meanwhile, several people who were elected to work in the same building as Barry Black opted to remain paralyzed. As common as “thoughts and prayers” is a response from a certain group of lawmakers to these shootings is the complaint that people are too quick to politicize [insert latest shooting].

Yesterday, the House Majority Leader said, “I really get angry when I see people trying to politicize it for their own personal agenda, especially when we don’t even know the facts.” He suggested that all “the other side” (wait – there’s another side to an epidemic of gun violence where it’s okay…?) wants to do, “…is take guns away from law-abiding citizens before they even know the facts…”

Fine. Let’s not act hastily in response to Tennessee. How about we only use facts from last year’s shootings? Parkland? Sandy Hook? Columbine?

How soon is enough damn time for these people to pull their heads out of the NRA’s ass and do something?

We have the facts already, from so many, many shootings. Let’s use them.

I don’t want your guns. I just want the guns to quit killing people in our homes, business…and schools.