If you are reading this, I am sure you are aware of the latest school shooting in Tennessee. Of course, this time was the dream scenario for social conservatives and their excessive need to keep fighting culture wars. The shooter identified as transgender. Of course, we should immediately ignore the overwhelming statistics that indicate that school shooters and/or mass murders are usually cisgender white males.

Six people perished in this shooting (not counting the shooter). Three of them were school children and three were adults working in the school. One of those adults was a substitute teacher. While conservatives will love the transgender part of the story, there are other parts of the story they are likely to gloss over. For one, it happened at a private Presbyterian school with maybe 200 students. For another, the shooter didn’t go through an unlocked side door.

Of course, we are just talking narratives at this point. The numbers on mass shootings are overwhelming. Every individual situation is different. In this case, you had a former student at the school that obviously had some sort of psychological trauma that motivated them to do this. No sane person does this. Naturally, this talking point will be exhausted. Just once it would be nice to hear people actually make suggestions of what to do about it rather than just land on easy platitudes.

I wish I could be angry about this. I wish I could be moved to tears by yet another seemingly tragic and preventable event. I wish I could have some hope that maybe another one of these in the news would spur on enough people to mobilize and do something about it. It won’t and they won’t. We’ll talk about door control. We’ll talk about arming teachers. We’ll talk about stationing at least one police officer on every campus in America.

On the one hand, you have the evil and horrible scourge that is transgender and LGTBQ+ rights and demands. The common conservative plank establishes the idea that anyone that is transgender is really just mentally ill. While that notion is disgusting and hateful, it also murders their own point. If someone that is transgender is truly mentally ill then why are they allowed to have a gun much less multiple guns?

We know what causes this. We have known since the very first prominent mass shooting event at a school before the turn of the 21st century. We knew at Columbine. We knew way back when the shooter at the UT bell tower terrorized the Austin community. We knew at Sandy Hook. We knew at Santa Fe and Uvalde. We knew at Newtown. We are the only country in the world that has these events on a regular basis. It’s a simple enough thinking exercise. How is our country different from the rest of the world?

At this point, no serious politician is talking about confiscating any guns. No serious politician is talking about repealing the second amendment. Those thoughts had occurred to me once or twice though. No one believes you could do that safely or that it would completely eliminate these events. We know better. We know that common sense gun control measures would reduce these events drastically without infringing on most individuals’ rights to own a firearm. Of course, we know that none of these things will happen. When you can’t laugh and can’t cry you are left numb. It certainly isn’t a comfortable feeling.