How many more, you ask? We have an answer.

@nbcnews

A mere thirty one days ago, in the wake of a horrific terrorist attack (unlike The Megalomaniac in Chief and his gutless compatriots, I will say a white man is capable of committing acts of terrorism and should be called out as such) in Las Vegas wherein a lone gunman killed 59 people and injured nearly 600 in a matter of minutes, I said there would be another one.

Today, that other one, yet another terrorist attack on American soil, occurred in a church in a San Antonio suburb. I'd like to be outraged that this happened at a church. I'd like to be outraged that churches, which by their vary nature are sanctuaries of peace, are not exempt from such horror. I'd like to be outraged but we've accepted that elementary schools and the children within are fair targets and that the most super-effective solution is to arm teachers. I'd like to be outraged but we've decided that being massacred is one of the potential acceptable risks of going out to the movies. I'd like to be outraged but we've accepted that if you're out at the club with your friends, getting mowed down like an enemy combatant is just an unpleasant downside.

Our political leaders, and I use that term in the loosest possible way, have already come out wringing their hands and calling for prayers. They are also calling for calm and that this is certainly not the time to talk action or politicizing what has happened. Interestingly, just a few days ago when a brown man, a Muslim, ran down eight people in New York, these same leaders were screaming for extreme vetting and the death penalty before the first bodies had been removed from the scene. Double standards are fun, aren't they?

The fact that the twenty six (so far) people who were slaughtered this afternoon were in church praying when they were killed will change nothing. The NRA will continue to pay its blood money to politicians who will gladly accept it. Apparently that cushion of cash makes it easier for them to sleep once they utter their somber platitudes about thinking and praying about the victims.

The bottom line is that nothing will change. We are destroying ourselves and we have no one to blame but ourselves.

What have we done?

Anyone remember those days?
When there was humanity...

 Bleary-eyed and not ready to start my day, I rolled over this morning and as is my ritual, I grabbed my phone to get a take on the overnight events as that helps frame the way my work day is going to go. Based on the home screen full of alerts, I instantly regretted opening my eyes. Scrolling through the updates from the various outlets I follow, I found myself overwhelmed. Again.

Five police officers dead in Dallas. The largest loss of law enforcement life since 9/11. Scenes of people running for their lives during a peaceful march as the terrifying but all too familiar soundtrack of semi-automatic gunfire played in the background filled my newsfeed.

Just a day before as I rode into the city on the train, I was gutted watching the footage of a black man, bleeding to death in the front seat of a car. The bright red blood stain seeping across his white t-shirt was as jarring as it was sickening.

As the events of the last few days have played out, I've asked myself one question: What have we done? And by we, I mean us. I mean we fellow human beings. When did we decide that all this was A-OK? When did we decide that humanity - compassion, kindness, understanding, sympathy, tolerance - no longer has a place among us?

Was it when 49 mostly gay Latino men were slaughtered in a nightclub in Orlando?
Was it when seemingly countless young black men have been killed while in police custody or at the hand of the local neighborhood watch psychopath guy?
Was it when a privileged white young man gets a literal slap on the hand for a vicious rape?
Was it when we decided that we were totally OK with the slaughter of twenty school children and six teachers in an elementary school?
Was it when we decided poverty, both here and around the world, is not our problem?
Was it when we decided it would be super fun to have a racist, bigoted, misogynist who literally spews divisiveness at every turn run for president?

Our recent history does not build a case for evidence of our humanity. Were we on trial for a lack of humanity, the evidence would be so overwhelming that it would redefine the concept of an "open and shut case" for perpetuity. No amount of wringing our hands, hash tagging, or, and as a man of faith it pains me to say this, praying, will seemingly turn the tide. Trust me, too, that the irony of me writing this very missive, which will be tweeted with a hash tag, is not lost on me.

If we are to bring back a shred of our humanity, it must come from each of us individually. It comes from us taking action, from doing something. It will come from us showing compassion and kindness. Alan Paton, a South African anti-apartheid activist, said, "There is only one way in which we can endure man's inhumanity to man and that is to try, in one's own life, to exemplify man's humanity to man."

Perhaps if we took Mr. Paton's advice to heart, we might stop seeing scenes like this:

EMT's at work at the Dallas shooting
@nbcnews

Maybe we can one day turn the tide on this tsunami of inhumanity, so we can stop asking, "What have we done?" and can proudly say to our children, or grandchildren, "Look what we did."

50 Dead

Photo Credit: Joe Burbank / Orlando Sentinel

50 Dead

50 People Killed

50 lives snuffed out by the cold brutal efficiency of an AR-15 rifle and a handgun in the hands of, and no, I do not think it's too soon to assign a label, a madman. Only a madman could perpetrate such a crime.

The slaughter of those 50 people was not the only crime committed last night. Perhaps the greater crime has been our nation's inability to take any action whatsoever to prevent these crimes from happening again. This ongoing macabre parade of mass death at the hands of gunmen happens nowhere else in the world, except for the gang at ISIS. Ironically, we are trying to exterminate them. But, hey, take action here at home? Don't be silly.

What is it going to take for these mass killings to end? In considering the history of just a few of these, because they are too numerous to count or sadly even remember, it seems like they have touched all corners of our American life. For your consideration:

Where people go to scarf down fast food: McDonalds, San Ysidro, California
Where people send their little ones to elementary school: Sandy Hook Elementary
Where people send their teens to school: Columbine High School
Where people send their kids for higher learning: Virginia Tech
Where people go for some movie escapism: Century 16 Theaters, Aurora, CO
Where people go to study scripture and to pray: Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, Charleston, SC
Where people go for a night out: Pulse, Orlando, Florida

Notice that not one of those places was an active war zone where one knowingly understands the risks of what lies ahead. The only danger that the people eating at McDonalds that day in 1984 was from the fat in the fries, not from a crazed killer. Not one child at Sandy Hook expected to be slaughtered that morning by a madman with an assault rifle. Not one person seeing that "Batman" movie that night in Aurora knew they were at risk of being killed by yet another madman armed with an assault rifle.

The assault rifle, in all its forms, has played an outsized role in these killings. But according to the NRA and their ominously named Institute for Legislative Action, assault rifles are harmless. Because target practice. Read for yourselves:

The AR-15, the firearm that gun control supporters most often call an “assault weapon,” is the most popular rifle on the market today, accounting for one-fourth of all rifles manufactured in the United States. AR-15s are commonly kept for protection, they’re the most widely used rifle in marksmanship competitions and formal training, they’re widely used for recreational shooting, and they’re commonly used for hunting. Americans acquire roughly a million new AR-15s every year, in addition to large numbers of comparable semi-automatic rifles.

I could maybe get on board with that statement if it read with a little bit more of reality in it. Something like this:

The AR-15, the firearm that gun control supporters most often call an “assault weapon,” is the most popular rifle on the market today, accounting for one-fourth of all rifles manufactured in the United States. AR-15s are commonly kept for protection from imagined threats, they’re the most widely used rifle in marksmanship competitions and formal training, they’re widely used for recreational shooting of humans, and they’re commonly used for hunting innocent people. Americans acquire roughly a million new AR-15s every year, in addition to large numbers of comparable semi-automatic rifles.

Chris Murphy, Democratic Senator - Connecticut, unloaded this morning on his Congressional cohorts, rightfully calling them out for their complicity in this latest assault:

"This phenomenon of near constant mass shootings happens only in America - nowhere else.

Congress has become complicit in these murders by its total, unconscionable deafening 

silence. This doesn't have to happen, but this epidemic will continue without end - if

Congress continues to sit on its hands and do nothing - again."

He's right. 100% right. These mass murders will continue to happen until our elected representatives actually do something to bring an end to the madness. But I'm not going to hold my breath. Their record of intransigence and epic 'do-nothingness' is unmatched. 

In the meantime, what's happened to our humanity? We have completely lost sight of our humanity. Once you've lost respect for humanity, I would imagine that it's very easy to no longer see the child at the end of that gunsight as child but a target. Or the gay man as nothing more than something that needs to be eliminated. Or the black woman grasping her Bible as nothing more than an enemy.

Yes, guns are a huge problem and an ugly issue to even try and solve. But how are we going to solve for this issue of humanity? 

We've got to figure out how to save ourselves. Fast.

SaveSave

It must end.

When will we grow weary of reading yet another
list of names of those killed in a shooting? 

For the first time in 95 years, the venerated New York Times has today published an editorial on the front page of the paper. In 1920, the reason for the front page editorial was the nomination of  Warren G. Harding as the Republican presidential candidate. Looking back through the lens of hindsight now, that editorial seems superfluous at best. In the future, the same will not be said of today's editorial. The reason for today's editorial is far more compelling. In the wake of yet another mass shooting, in which 14 people were slaughtered, the editorial is a much needed call for greater regulation on gun control.

For me to try and improve upon the call issued by the Times would be ludicrous. I will only implore you to read it. For those who refuse to read the Times because the oracles of all things 'fair and balanced' at Fox News or the Blaze tell you not to, please read the editorial. It is not a left-wing grab to take away your right to own a gun. It is a call for our nation to be better. It is a call for our nation to at least try and stop the madness of uncontrolled gun violence.

When will we tire of reading the names of those who have died in a mass shooting? How many more times will we have to hear the neighbor or co-worker of a perpetrator say, "I never it saw it coming." Have we grown so callous that the anguish of a victim's family means nothing to us? I'm afraid the answer to that one is yes. Given that the massacre of twenty elementary school children spurned zero change in our gun control laws, our sense of decency took a long walk off a short pier.

Somehow this madness must stop. It must end.

"It is a moral outrage and national disgrace that civilians can 

legally purchase weapons designed to kill people with

brutal speed and efficiency."

End the Gun Epidemic in America - New York Times Editorial Board, Dec. 5, 2015