Ignoring the Obvious
"The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun." --Wayne LaPierre, Vice President and CEO of the National Rifle Association, after the Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting. And what if the bad guy with a gun is wearing body armor? Mass shootings have become so frequent in the United States that the aftermaths are utterly predictable. Speculative news reporting, Democratic hand-wringing, empty Republican platitudes, and rapid-response gun lobby spin flood the media. By the time accurate reporting is possible, the nation has moved on--all to frequently to the next shooting. Numb, shell-shocked, unable to process the sheer magnitude of the national gun pathology, our minds seize on distractions, flail about for something, anything that will keep us from imagining our friends, our families, our children on the receiving end of the next barrage. The most recent of these shootings appears to have had a connection to ISIS, the most recent i...