Has this been happening to you recently? You’re privy to, or engaged in, a conversation with several people who each share a version of a recent shooting. They/you can’t agree on the precise facts only to discover that you’re all talking about different shootings. This then leads to the grown up version of show and tell invariably starting with “Yeah, but did you hear about the one where..?” It’s now en vogue to be first to know and foster a discussion about a shooting.

The United States has a problem with a proliferation of guns and ease of access, and it’s bleeding all over everything else, everywhere else… Cross-border gun trafficking is leading to skyrocketing gun crimes in neighboring regions. Are you feeling numb by it all? Heavy blood loss does that. The imminence of death does that. But don’t worry, by the time you realize that middle schools and the NRA are breeding as many terrorists as Al Qaeda, you’ll be so numb you won’t feel a thing…