SEPTEMBER 17, 2013

      Mass killings in America are not so rare. The Navy Yard shooting yesterday seems not to have been a plot by some political group or ideology, but just mass murder by a nut with some guns.

     President Obama, during his term, has had to cope with mass killings in Fort Hood, Tucson, Aurora and Newtown.  Well, "cope" is the wrong word, of course.  No one, not even a president, can bring the victims back.  All we can do is offer sympathy, try to ease the families' pain.

     You can make an argument that stricter gun control laws might lessen the number of these awful killings.  The British don't have them, nor the French, and gun control is stricter there.  But the fact is, we don't want that.  Gun control loses in Congress;  there was a story the other day about a couple of state officials who were for it being recalled.

    That's who we are;  that's how we choose to live.  It's hard to imagine us changing.  The occasional massacre by lone gun-wielding nuts is apparently part of a price we are willing to pay.

      I just don't understand.