If that statistic doesn’t make you pause and wonder what has gone wrong with American society, then there simply is no hope for you.

Red remembers his first mass shooting at UT-Austin in August 1966.  It was so extraordinary, so bizarre, so surreal and unbelievable that such things could happen in his hometown, that Red was completely unable to process it for many years.  In fact, maybe he never has. And it remained an isolated occurrence for a long time.  It was not the norm.  Red remembers that it was 2 regular police officers and a civilian that went into the UT-Tower and killed the gunman (Red refuses to identify these SOB’s by their names whenever possible).  Just two ordinary beat cops and a volunteer armed with their service revolvers.

Compare that to the response yesterday in San Bernardino.  Large numbers of members of tactical weapons squads and para-military equipment were deployed. Tank-like vehicles and remote control bomb disposal equipment are apparently routinely available.  Our police have become militarized and perhaps necessarily so because of the prevalence of such violence.  Red doesn’t like it, but what is the alternative in the face of insanity on the levels we are seeing it in this country.

Red sends out his condolences to the grieving, but that is clearly insufficient.  There will be and already are the predictable calls for more gun control countered by calls for even more guns.  There must be measures that can be implemented that are consistent with the spirit of the 2d Amendment (however perverted and bowdlerized by the U.S. Supreme Court) that can perhaps help curtail if not prevent the abject crazies and identified threats from having free and open access to high-powered weaponry.   And the idea that more armed citizens and more heavily armed citizens will prevent such attacks is just a Tea Party wet dream as far as Red is concerned.  Find some actual evidence of more than a handful of instances where an armed citizen has done something to prevent or foreshorten one of these kind of attacks and we can talk.  Until then, please shut up.

Red doesn’t have the answers, but he can clearly see the problem.  That is the first step that so many in our c0untry are unwilling to take.   This is a major problem and it is getting worse.  What are we as a nation going to do about it?