Violence strikes again at the roots of our society

About15 ½ monthsago, after 49werekilled and58woundedata nightclub in Orlando, Florida, we wrote in this space, “Of all the words this week, hopelessness may be the most dangerous. We must believe there is a solution, a way to prevent another mass shooting. We must believe that we can find it if only we try a little harder.”

We still believe that. But have to acknowledge that hope gets tougher to sustain with each new outbreak of irrational mass bloodshed And as horrible as Sunday night’s massacre in Las Vegas was, even worse is the suspicion that after another week, another month, another year, all of us will again find ourselves groping for ways to react to an even worse outrage.

Today every Western nation is the crosshairs of extremists who defame a great religion by claiming to be inspired by Islam. And other nations have had terrible mass slayings committed by psychopaths: Seventeen killed in a school in Scotland in 1996. Thirty-five killed at a tourist site in Australia, also in 1996. Seventy-seven dead— 69shotandeightkilled bythedetonation of a car bomb — at the hands of a lunatic right-wing extremist in Norway in 2011.

But only the United States seems to be caught in an escalating cycle of these dreadful events. The death tolls are comparatively small in a nation of 323 million, but people don’t think in terms of statistics. They think that when they go to a movie, they may not be any safer than the 12 killed at a Colorado theater. Or that their