What in the hell are we even doing?
No one tried to kill me last weekend. Not one of my friends or family was killed. I was twelve hours by car away from the nearest mass murder. But it’s now Wednesday and it’s all that’s on my mind. I went grocery shopping Sunday and for the very first time in my life I wondered where I would hide if someone started shooting.
I’m sad, distracted, anxious and unfocused. I hear sounds and my mind checks to see if it’s maybe gunfire. So that’s me three days out and eight hundred miles away. What on earth is it like for the hundreds of Americans, maybe thousands now, who have lived through this up close, lost loved ones, still suffering from the injuries they got in one of these mass killings? I’ll be the first to say that I have no real idea. But I do know that it’s horrific, unforgettable. And more and more Americans each day store this memory.
We live in a war zone. More Americans are killed and injured in ordinary places than soldiers killed in combat. Any other sort of issue that claimed this many lives would be called an epidemic and treated will all available resources. What in the hell are we even doing?