The "It's All Too Ordinary" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Days like this have become more and more ordinary all over the world.  So sad.  Turned on the news after getting home from my part-time job at the framing gallery to find that 13 people were killed and almost two dozen more wounded at a community college in Roseburg, Oregon.  It was the latest mass killing in the U.S. and need I tell you how it was carried out.  Seems a young man fired a shot that went through a classroom window, killing the teacher, and then asked other students in the class to stand and give the religion they were associated with before he began to shoot them.  Almost everyone in the classroom was killed by the shooter who had four guns on him.  He was later killed in a shootout with police.  Reports online call for more gun control in the United States, but you and I both know that will never happen.  The President came on the screen and said, "Somehow this has become routine.  The reporting is routine, my response here, at this podium, ends up being routine. ...We've become numb to this."  How true.  It was only three months ago when a young man, visiting in a South Carolina church, killed nine congregation members.  Then five U.S. servicemen in Chattanooga, Tennessee were gunned down.  Today's shooting wasn't a record though.  That happened in April of 2007 when a student at Virginia Tech University killed 32 people, wounded 32 others and then killed himself.   Remember back in December of 2012 when a young man shot and killed his mother then went to nearby Sandy Hook Elementary School and opened fire on the teachers and students before killing himself.  Much earlier than that in October of 2006 a deranged man, using a gun, burst into an Amish Schoolhouse a few miles from my house in Lancaster, PA and shot 10 little schoolgirls, killing many of them.  One thing all these shooters had in common; a gun!!  Yeah, I know if everyone else in the United States was armed, these shootings may not have happened.  Sounds like we are living in the wild, wild West of days gone by.  

Starting to remind me of the old-time Westerns I used to watch on TV Saturday mornings when I was a kid.  Everyone would get shot and the next week they were all back on TV once again to do it all over again.  Was never that way in real life and never will be, will it?  I mean the part of coming back again next week to do it all over again.  Now the shootings are permanent and seems like they will never stop.  Certainly stronger gun control isn't the answer, or is it?  I guess I need to join the crowd and get a handgun and a permit to hide it under my shirt.  Just like everyone else seems to be doing.  So sad.  And, it's all too ordinary.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.