A Quarter of a Century On...

Maybe it's a phenomenon of age and the aging process but I'm always surprised to discover something I think of as 'not that long ago' was, in terms of the time-space continuum, very much long ago.

I've lost track of the number of shootings and ensuing carnage and trauma from mass shootings/gun violence here in the Star-Spangled Land of the Round Doorknobs just for this calendar year and we're only one hundred and ten days into it. How fortunate (sarcasm sold separately) that someone else does keep track, eh? Talk about over-achievers, eh?  

There are so many shootings, and they are so frequent we are perilously close to experiencing a national shortage of thoughts and prayers. Oh dear.

Meanwhile, lost in the churn, on this date in 1999, what we didn't know at the time, was the catalyst to the uncontrollable senseless epidemic of school shootings and violence we are just barely living through to this day, Columbine.

Cassie Bernall, 17; Steven Curnow, 14; Corey DePooter, 17; Kelly Fleming, 16; Matthew Kechter, 16; Daniel Mauser, 15; Daniel Rohrbough, 15; William "Dave" Sanders, 47; Rachel Scott, 17; Isaiah Shoels, 18; John Tomlin, 16; Lauren Townsend, 18, and Kyle Velasquez, 16.

I imagine by now more than one of them might have had kids of their own and would have worried about them the same way their parents worried. To no avail. April 20, 1999.

Don't tell me we 'can't do anything to stop' this when what you mean is 'we won't do anything.' -bill kenny