I don't know. (Day 86, Year 3)

I've written about mass shootings at least a dozen times in Yoke. 

Since the first time I wrote on the topic in 2012 and the only thing that has changed in those eleven years is the death toll. 

I have, somehow, become so used to it all that whenever one of these horrible events happen, I digest the facts, feel sad, briefly think about racing to pick up my children, say a prayer and then go about about my day. I don't forget about it; I simply put it somewhere else. 

I know this is a luxury--a privilege--since my family has thus far been untouched by gun violence. I pray we remain that way. 

I do find myself counting down the years until my children are out of school and therefore out of the line of fire of a school shooter. It is like I am literally wishing away their childhoods in this countdown. 

However, that means they are simply trading up a risk-right? There are college campus shootings and concert shootings and shopping mall shootings and political rally shootings and random shootings on city streets simply by being in the wrong place at the wrong time. There is no escape to the potential shootings because it feels like it could happen at moment, anywhere. There are guns and mental illnesses and lunatics and madness everywhere. 

The devil seems to love guns, it seems. 

I have no idea how to fix this--how to stop the violence and the murders and the guns and the shootings--I don't think anyone has any idea what to do because thus far nothing has worked. I don't feel like either side of the aisle has done a damn thing right, frankly. I certainly haven't done much other than pray, write, think and hope that it all stops. 

But friends, none of this has worked, has it? Today it the Covenant School--three 9 year olds, three adults and one shooter are dead. Seven lives wasted, leveled, ripped away in the pull of a trigger. And we all know this will not be the last. We all know that our world is giving rise to more shooters, more violence and more death. 

I don't know, friends. I don't know what I can do; I don't know if I am even supposed to do anything. I don't know what anyone can do. It's impossible; the guns exist. The mental illnesses exist. The hate exists. 

And now, for seven families, the sorrow and forever grieving exists. 

I don't know, friends. I simply don't know. 


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