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A day or two after a deadly mass shooting in Nashville, His Eminence Governor DeSantis signs a bill authorizing Florida’s citizens to carry a concealed weapon without a permit.
What are we to infer from such decision?
That carrying a gun is going to stop mass shootings?
They haven’t.
That we, as individuals, will feel safer?
That must be it.
But we are not a collection of individuals. We are a society, a collective that needs everyone to function as well as they can for things to work.
I did not hear His Eminence speak one word about the importance of learning to talk to each other. Nothing.
If the shooter had spoken to someone about his problems, his homicidal urge would have eased.
He would have had a chance to understand his own misery and not rush to give it to someone else. And whatever rage would have been left he could have taken it out on a tree or gone hunting for snakes or rats.
But the shooter chose human beings instead. His burden of pain was too overwhelming for him to carry and he chose to cut short the lives of others.
It takes a long time, a lot of effort, a lot of nurturing, to raise a human being, so every death is a loss for all of us.
There were children as well as adults killed in Nashville. Who knows what contributions those folks may have made to our society if they had not been killed.
Nashville is far from where I live but it felt like the shooting was next door. Down the street.
In fact, not too long…
