If you’ve ever spent time visiting the state of Maine, especially this time of year with the fall colors and the peaceful kind of feeling you get, and you hear residents say “things like this don’t happen here”, the news today about the latest and one of the deadliest mass shootings happening there may hit you harder.
And sadly, everyone is hit hard when these mass shootings happen and they do seem to happen in every state.
And once again, today, the list of now more than 500 mass shootings, defined as four or more people shot besides the shooter, grows longer.
The U.S. is on another pace, again, to have more than 600 mass shootings in a year.
There were 645 last year. 689 in 2021 and 610 in 2020.
And once again, we ask ourselves, how can this be, why do they happen, how do they happen, how do we prevent them, and when is enough, enough.
As the news of what happened in Maine last night spreads today, the debate over what to do about it and how to do it will intensify again, for a while, and then it will settle into what it usually settles into, a lack of much being done about it. Until the next mass shooting sparks the debate again. And so it goes, again and again.
And again, for the families of the victims of this latest mass shooting, and for the many other families of past mass shooting victims, the pain never fully ends.
But we can hope and pray that maybe one day, things will change.
(Photo Getty Images)
Photo: AFP via Getty Images