Bob Schwartz

Shepard Fairey

I published my first post about the National Rifle Association in the wake of Sandy Hook—more than five years ago. I wrote:

The dead can’t vote, and in the case of the children killed today at Sandy Hook Elementary School, they weren’t old enough anyway. So we have to speak for them and vote for them. Today is the day.

That began a string of posts about guns and the NRA, the most recent one following the massacre in Las Vegas. The killings just keeps on happening.

The mayhem from today’s shooting at a high school in Florida is being assessed. It is news and will be for a while. Republicans shilling for the NRA will explain the problem, which won’t involve guns. Soon, we will move on. The injured will more or less heal, the dead will still be dead, their loved ones will mourn.

Guns are one of the ways that America is “exceptional” in the world. Despite the patriotic pride that some take in this exceptionalism, it is nothing to be proud of. Shootings are not normal.

And the dead still can’t vote.