What We Need to Hear Now

Every time there is another mass shooting, we hear the same responses from our leaders. I know that we are sick to the depths of our collective souls of the empty offers of “thoughts and prayers.” We’ve heard the same meaningless blather from our national leaders for years.

We need more. We need much more than these same pointless platitudes. We turn to our national leaders, pushing them to take some action to address the endless horror that keeps unfolding in our cities and towns.

But you know what? I think we also need to demand stronger, more powerful words from the local leaders who go in front of the cameras when these massacres happen.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t need to hear that yet another American town is going to “pull together” to recover from slaughter. I don’t need to hear that people will be able to move past the murders of their neighbors because they are a “tight-knit” community.

I’m ready for someone, in some typically American place, to tell the country that there is in fact no way to pull together enough to heal from a mass shooting.

I want some small-town mayor to tell the truth.

It occurs to me that Littleton, Colorado has never recovered from what happened at Columbine High School more than 20 years ago. Did you know that to this day, busloads…