Political opportunism amid chaos and pain

A suppressor doesn’t make a gun silent like the weapon of a Hollywood assassin. The Washington Post reported a suppressor would reduce the sound of an AR-15 round to that of “a gunshot or jackhammer.” There’s nothing silent about a jackhammer.

Should we have more debate? Certainly. Let’s have it.

But let’s not forget that most killings aren’t committed by some lone sniper without apparent motive. The killings happen on the streets of big cities like Chicago, a city of strict gun control, where street gangs continue their slaughter and City Hall is powerless to stop them.

There are guns in the suburbs and in rural areas, and yet the suburbs aren’t killing fields. So if we’re going to have another gun debate, can’t we at least discuss culture, too? And can’t we wonder about what pathology drives so many mass shootings in the past few years?

We know that we’re become increasingly nihilistic, and isolated from one another on our electronic devices. We know we’re divided into politically warring tribes, as the political center crumbles, as the Washington establishment holds desperately to power.

We know that attendance continues to drop at traditional centers of worship. And even so, the political/cultural elites who frame our gun and other debates often mock the remaining faithful as “religious fanatics.”

As America abandons religion for entertainment, we consume unprecedented amounts of pharmaceuticals, from opioids to mood-altering drugs, to mask our emotional and mental pain.

Aren’t you curious as to how this impacts culture?

Even so, when the shooting began in the Mandalay Bay massacre, as the country music crowd stampeded in fear, as people died, Americans selflessly helped each other, comforted each other, risking and giving their own lives to save each other.

If only we’d been allowed a day or two to mourn, to reflect on the goodness even in the midst of the horror, before the politics swooped in.