Recently we’ve all been witness to devastation in Houston and Puerto Rico, hoping we could all do something to help. This morning my husband and I awoke to yet another tragedy, this one not a natural disaster, but a man-made horror. We live in the Las Vegas area, in a city that butts up against it. The senseless (a term too-often used for lack of a better one) murder of over 50 people who were doing nothing more than enjoying some outdoor music and entertainment, the wounding of several hundred more, is inexplicable. It was apparently not terror perpetrated by another power; it was simply a man with an arsenal of weapons — many of them automatic — who obviously planned far in advance how to wreak the most havoc.
My own family is, thankfully, safe and sound. I cannot help thinking, though, how easily it might have been different. My grown daughters, their partners and my teen-aged grandchildren enjoy concerts and might have been there, as some of their friends were. Not all of those friends escaped unscathed.
What will this post on my not-widely-read blog accomplish? Nothing, I’m afraid. Only our government representatives can pass laws to assure help for the mentally ill or to get automatic guns out of private hands. We absolutely must push for them to do exactly that.
