Parkland

Another week. Another school shooting.

Another bunch of flags flown at half mast.

Another bunch of lawmakers in the pocket of the NRA sending “prayers and thoughts and condolences” to families of dead children.

Another round of nauseating blather as to how we shouldn’t “politicize this tragedy,” by talking about gun control.

I’ve been talking about gun control for most of my life. It began when I was a high school debater at Homestead High School in Sunnyvale, and continued through my days at Stanford. And beyond.

I’ve never been able to understand why, in many states, you can be old enough to buy a gun but not old enough to buy a beer. Why you have to pass a test to drive a car, but you can buy a gun without having to demonstrate any proficiency or knowledge of safety procedures. Why anyone wants or needs an assault weapon.

To hunt? To protect yourself in your home? Seriously?

Our stable genius president and his GOP colleagues say that “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.”

I beg to differ. People with guns kill people.

An AR-15 is not designed for target practice. Or to shoot an animal. It’s designed to kill human beings. Lots of human beings. Quickly.

These massacres—in schools, churches, theaters and concert venues—don’t happen in any other country in the world. That’s because no other country permits such easy access to guns.

Every country has people who are mentally ill. Only ours allows them to buy guns and slaughter school children.

It is the easy access to guns in America that arms psychopaths like Nikolas Cruz, turns a domestic argument into a homicide, a bout of depression into a suicide, and a noise in the night into an accidental shooting.

It’s time for all of us to stand up, demand action, and vote the pro-gun crowd out of office.

Otherwise, this will blow over. Nothing will be done. We’ll go back to our normal activities. Reading the latest round of tweets, the latest expose´ on an entertainer, athlete or politician who abused a woman.

And the flags will be raised up. The protests will die down. The NRA will continue to send checks to Paul Ryan, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Donald Trump.

And more kids will be gunned down.