And the shots ring closer to home

Let's see. You buy your ticket, you go inside, you sit down with your popcorn and your Diet Coke, and you, well, you die because some crazy in the back of you is carrying a gun.

That's the randomness of life, the craziness of our times. Folks with guns, crazy folks with guns (and don't get into the rather pale argument about terrorist attack versus mentally challenged attack versus hate crime versus.

That's a ridiculous argument for another day. The question today is where are we?

But for this morning, let's examine (again, and again, and again) where we are with our guns.

I grew up in the country, around guns. But for the life of me all I remember about those guns (and truth disclosed here I've owned one gun in my life, a 20-guage shotgun when I was a teenager) is they were used for hunting. Big ol' honking guns you couldn't hid unless you wore a London Fog. And nobody I knew ever did.

Now, as near as I can tell, it ain't hunters going into theaters and shooting folks. Just saying.

My wife, Mary, and I have been in that theater in Lafayette, La., in which a gun toting kook stood up and started blasting way last night. I say without thinking too hard about it, it could have been us. There but for the grace of God go I, we, you, us.

In the past month -- MONTH - we've had the shooting in Charleston, S.C. in a church. We've had the shooting in a couple of armed forces recruitment centers. And now this.

It's hot, it's sticky, it's the thick of summer. But come on. Where are we?

I wrote the following in 2014. You tell me right now after you've finished, what's changed?

I am seldom out of words. But the words that I have today, after a weekend of deep thought and prayer, are scattered. I will try my best to put them into perspective. I'm not sure I will be clear, but I pray for clarity.

I watched the service from Newtown, Conn. on Sunday night. I was moved far greater than I imagined I would ever be from a service for people I didn't know. I'm not, or my heart isn't, wired that way. But I kept thinking of the times I've lost loved ones, and I put myself into the hearts and bodies of those in that auditorium, and heard their tears and wails quite loudly as various clergy and politicians spoke or said prayers.

I must confess that I wasn't happy to have a hodge-podge of clergy there, but the more prayers were said from various faiths, the more I thought how wonderful this was. I wasn't happy that the president was speaking from this event, but the more I heard, the more wonderful I thought the message was. The comments I saw on Facebook today about the fact NBC didn't show a quarter of a football game leads me to think that we have bigger problems than I even realized.

How anyone, anyone -- hear me -- can think that we should not do more to prevent this, or at the very, very least to prevent these kinds of things is without question or doubt wrong. I'm seldom this clear on something....

It is at these kind of times that we need to step back and not be left or right, not be conservative or liberal, not even all Americans. We should simply be decent, caring, parents and relatives and friends. Just people would do. If we are all Christians, whatever in the world that actually is today, so be it. But it doesn't take much brains, it seems to me, to retaliate on the other side oof whatever side one comes downon guns, or on violence, or whatever the heck the case might be in these turbulent times.

When will enough be enough? Is that really an argument? If the answer to these things is putting a gun into the hands of children or teachers so that they can be called safe, then I'm afraid what I've been afraid about for our country is indeed coming true. Our society is the most dangerous in the world. It is our very freedom that makes it so.

It's not the sane folks doing the shooting, you say.
But how do we keep the guns out of the crazy-folks hands, I counter?

No one has an answer because we're once again going to squabble not solve, fight not figure, argue not discuss.

And on and on and on we go, down the rabbit hole. Because we continually are shooting at the rabbit.