As so many mass shootings continue, I’m out of words

I watched the news from the shooting at the Gilroy Garlic Festival, horrified that it happened again.

Two of the three killed were children. Keyla Salazar, 13. Stephen Romero, 6.

I didn’t write about it because I didn’t know what to write. I was out of words.

I’ve been writing about mass shootings for too long, starting in 1999 with Columbine, which stunned the world because 14 children were killed at one time.

I write mostly about the people killed, their families, those who survived, and what could stop it from happening again.

I stopped believing that anything would change after Sandy Hook, the Connecticut school where 20 children were slaughtered in 2012. If not that, what would it take?

Not 12 dead and 70 wounded in a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, in 2012.

Not 49 dead and 53 wounded in a Florida nightclub in 2016.

Not the 58 people killed and hundreds more injured at a country music festival in Las Vegas in 2017.

Not 14 more dead children and three adults at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland, Florida, in 2018.

It had been a week since the Gilroy shooting when news broke of the massacre at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas.

I tried to imagine how scared shoppers must have been. I felt sick to my stomach that children’s names would be among the 22 dead and two dozen wounded.

I wavered between being teary-eyed and wanting to punch something. I was out of words.

I woke on Sunday to another shooting, in Dayton, Ohio, nine dead and 27 wounded.

I’m afraid we’re learning to live with this. Our kids practice lockdown drills at school. We look for the closest exit at movie theaters and concerts.

We wait for the next one. They come like rapid fire.

No wonder I am out of words. Words won’t do it. We need action.