Horse 2375 - The Parable Of The Good American?

There was once a fifteen year old high school girl who had arrived early because she wanted to see her friends. She sat down on a bench in the school yard and took out a book to get in some quick study time, by revising what they had learned in class the day before.

As she was sitting there minding her own business, two boys with semi-automatic weapons arrived on campus and proceeded to empty bullets info everything and everyone. They killed eight students, which wasn't even enough to make the local news bulletin, injured about thirty students including the girl sitting on the bench in the schoolyard, and when the police arrived, they shot and killed one of the boys and arrested the other.

First there was the politician who said that it was all too early to talk about what had happened but that his thoughts and prayers were with the victims.

Next there was the second politician who said that we need to be doing more for our police officers who bravely stand in the line of duty.

Next there was the news pundit who accused the boys of being radicalised online and being illegal immigrants, despite neither of those things being true.

After this came the male politician who said that this was a mental health problem and that we should look at that instead of blaming guns.

Then came a female politician who agreed but when she asked for funding initiatives to help solve mental health problems, everyone else laughed at such a very silly idea.

Next there was another news pundit who looked as though he had swallowed a wasp, and was very very shouty, and accused anyone who wanted to implement any kind of gun control whatsoever as unpatriotic and bordering on treasonous.

Then came some lobbyists who agreed with the very shouty news pundit, and they paid a bunch of politicians not to look at gun control ever. They argued that the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is to have a good guy with a gun, despite there being no statistical evidence for this.

After that, there was yet another shouty news pundit who was even more shouty and who said that you couldn't trust the government and that everyone needed to go out and get more guns to defend their family because they have a constitutional right.

All of these people either saw that there was a problem and skirted around it, or denied that there was a problem at all. They continued to do nothing while many school children went to hospital because of their injuries, some even bankrupting their families because of expensive and inadequate health insurance, and the rest of America went on its merry way.

In the meantime, the thirteen year old brother of the girl who had been sitting on the bench in the schoolyard, vowed to get revenge on the people who did this and to the world at large. He went out and bought some semi-automatic weapons and nobody cared or checked that he was only thirteen years old.

What do you think happens next? Well, all you have to do is change the ages and location and repeat roughly once every ten days or so. Nobody ever learns anything from this parable and it keeps on repeating.

Addenda:
What is the official statutory time limit after an event like what we saw yesterday in Florida before we're allowed to talk about the issue of gun control? The Sandy Hook Elementary shooting was six years ago, can we start there?