In the wake of tragedy — again
Once again, we find ourselves struggling to understand, respond after another mass shooting This was going to be a very different column — until 19 children and two adults were shot and killed by a gunman at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.
As I started composing this column in my head, something about that first sentence made me pause. I then realized it was nearly identical to what I’d written almost a decade ago when 20 children and six adults were killed by a gunman at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn.
Have we learned nothing as a nation about protecting our children since then? Apparently not. The unconscionable shooting at the mostly Latinx Robb Elementary School in Uvalde comes just 10 days after 10 Black people were murdered in a shooting in Buffalo.
And while the victims of any shooting are someone’s children, when the victims are young children, their deaths hit me — and I’m sure many others — like a gut punch.
