The lead editorial in today’s Dallas Morning News reads, “After Uvalde, Will Americans Act?” The reference is to yet another school shooting. Yesterday, in the small town of Ulvade, Texas, an 18 year student who attended the local high school armed himself with two assault rifles and ammunition. He shot and killed his grandmother before walking out the door headed to Uvalde Elementary School. There he took aim and started firing. When he was done, eighteen children and two teachers lay dead. Police arrived and the shooter was himself shot and killed. As the breaking news spread, the reactions and comments that have become generic in our culture floated across the various media outlets, and social platforms. Moments of silence were proclaimed. The default expression”Our prayers and thoughts are with the families” was offered by the usual pundits, both secular and sacred. The scenes of the tragedy brought to the nation’s collective memory how often we’ve drunk the bitter wine of senseless shootings; how we’ve staggered in grief and pain watching the images, or fallen in sorrow at the places were the slain were laid and we identified these precious elementary, high school, college, students or teachers. Columbine HS in 1999 introduced us to the recurrent American “horror show” of school shootings. So stunned were we then by that unimaginable violence, we thought something like that would/could never occur again. Not in the United States! In today’s parlance, we’d say it had to be a “one-off.” Little did we grasp at that pivotal moment that once the apple had been bitten, the taste for it would not diminish; that to prevent further such tragedies, the tree itself would need to be uprooted and apples banned throughout the land. But we were unwilling to take such drastic actions; we had a right to grow and eat apples! And here we are, 23 years later, apples flourishing; school shootings so common that by this time next week, the horror of Ulvalde will have become the basis for the latest squabble over gun (apple) control legislation, nothing more. If I sound pessimistic, I am. Right now, my answer to the editorial’s question: Will Americans Act? is a resounding “NO.” I will continue to pray for this nation, and for the many underlying reasons for such tragedies which have yet to be owned or addressed. I continue to hope the desire for apples will die.
Peace. Joy. Love.