Innocent people are dead, shot by a young man with a potent firearm, who died after an exchange of gunfire with police. Do you know what we’re referencing? By the date, you might know it’s those killed Monday by a 23-year-old bank employee in Louisville, but otherwise it could be one of dozens.
What are we doing here? What’s left to say? Nothing that hasn’t been said before, nothing that can’t best be said by the wails of the survivors, robbed once more of their loved ones in service to nothing, in furtherance of nothing, accomplishing nothing but to satisfy the malign fantasies of another angry recluse.
As the shots ring out in that familiar cadence — the drumbeat of death feared by those attending school, seeing a movie with friends, grocery shopping, attending a concert, or otherwise daring to exist in public — the multifaceted lives of those in the firing line are flattened to two things only.
