Another school shooting...

Another week and another school shooting: one of 212 mass shootings this year in America (and we’re still only in May). After shooting his grandmother, an 18-year-old youth walked into the elementary school in the small Texan town of Uvalde and turned both rifle barrels on the children. By the time law enforcement officers arrived, he had killed 19 children and two adults.

Former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona, herself a victim of a mass shooting in 2011, wondered “How many young lives will be cut short, families shattered, communities traumatized because our leaders refuse to act on gun violence? This is a uniquely American problem, which is now the leading cause of death for American children”. “Thoughts and prayers”, though offered after every school shooting, seem to have little or no effect

Satirical website, The Onion, managed to capture the inherant contradictions in America’s gun culture - headline: “No Way To Prevent This,” Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens - even though the piece was actually written in response to last week’s mass school shooting, in Buffalo, New York…