Getting Damned Sick and Tired of This Story

It's happened again, a week and a half after the last headline-grabbing massacre (one of many that occurred that week)... another mass shooting, this one killing fourteen elementary school students and a teacher.  The shooter was an 18 year old high school student from the same town, Uvalde, Texas.  It's monstrous that someone that age, indeed any age, would kill little kids.

As sad as I am, I have to note that I am fortunate to know many kindhearted and responsible teenagers.  My upstairs neighbor's children are very good at helping their mom watch over the gaggle of kids that descend upon their place every afternoon while their parents are still at work.  They help watch over a coterie of younger children, and ensure that everybody is well looked-out-for.  

I also have to pay my respects to the teenage counselors who work at the athletic program in which I am a volunteer coach.  These youths, many of whom came up through the program, and who I have known for years, are responsible for looking after the kids in the program, making sure they move from class to class in orderly fashion, and chaperoning them on water and bathroom breaks.  I really can't say enough for these caring, responsible young women and men.

It breaks my heart to read of teenage mass murderers.  I'm not a naive person, but it boggles my mind that boys (yeah, it always seems to be boys) could be so cruel, and could obtain the instruments of death so easily.  How did their parents, and our society as a whole, fail so that these killers are produced?

It's a conundrum, and one which our society seems particularly blasé about trying to solve.  I'm not in the mood to watch the coverage, with the same empty calls for thoughts and prayers.  I wouldn't even describe my feeling as déjà vu, because that would imply that this is a discrete prior feeling I've experienced before, whereas this is a continual occurrence, without even time for recovery.