To the Editor:

Nineteen fourth grade kids and two teachers. Dead. Another American mass shooting. Sixty-one such horrific events happened last year in America.

“There’s something happening here. But what it is ain’t exactly clear. There’s a man with a gun over there, telling me I got to beware.” Old song, new salience.

Nerves are increasingly raw. Uncertainty abounds. Snarls and dismissive looks have increasingly replaced casual nods and habitual social affirmations.

State and national government is, apparently, hopelessly broken. So long as the corporate overlords can fill their coffers, principle routinely gives way to profit and the wink/wink, nod/nod circus continues.

“We” is increasingly giving way to “them vs. us.”

America has given up on the spirit of Mayberry and begun to embrace the horrors and misery of Tombstone.

It’s not the guns. It’s not the leaders. It’s a growing sense of isolation, a loss of a sense of community, and an increasing lack of concern for one another.

“E pluribus unum” may still be the slogan on our money but it’s no longer the currency of our hearts.

There’s blood on all our hands.

The degree to which we are willing put ourselves and our own self-interests over the safety and well-being of our neighbors’ children is the most obvious measure of our rapidly deteriorating national spirit.

It’s not about the guns, it’s about us and how we choose to see one another.

Sixty-one mass shootings. Sixty were committed by males; angry young men who see mass slaughter as the only way forward. How did they get there? How did we get here? Is there anyway out? Heaven help us.