What kind of psychotic country fails to stop the murder of young children?

When 20 little 6- and 7-year-olds and six adults were murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary School and nothing, nothing at all was done to curb guns in the United States, it was finally crystal clear that the country was mentally ill. Now that it has happened again — another 19 small children and two adults have been murdered at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas — it can be said without any doubt at all that this country is psychotic about guns (“‘Complete evil’: 19 children, 2 teachers dead in Texas elementary school shooting,” May 25).

Is this psychosis curable? Is there any desire in the citizens to turn around this mental illness? I don’t think there is. It is a sickness that is part of the American fabric of society and has been from its very beginning. But it has gotten worse, and it now is one of the symptoms of the disintegration of this country which has been speeding toward the end of its experiment in democracy.

To murder small children in schools without seeking a stop to such a horror? What civilized country can do that and claim any sort of moral or ethical high ground, let alone a national sanity?