When Did We Get So Angry?

When did we get so angry? When did we wake up in the morning and have an overwhelming desire to strike out, harm, maim or kill someone else? When did a world of religious leaders preaching "peace" become a world of societies based upon and focused upon war? When did we lose it - lose our self-control, our personal happiness, our tolerance for others and our joy in our differences? When did the world become an "us" vs "them" instead of an opportunity to discover new thoughts, new friends and new lands. I don't like this new world very much, and Sunday's shooting showed anger at its worst.

The hits keep coming and we seem to be getting more and more immune to the shock, terror and death. Think back just a few years - let's keep it to within the last twenty or so. In 1999 we had Columbine - a high school in the foothills of Denver where two students with rifles, knives and explosives killed 13 of their fellow classmates. By the end of a very tense day, they also were dead, leaving the total at 15.

Then we had Virginia Tech - one perpetrator, two pistols, 33 dead (including the perpetrator). There was shock, and appropriate murmurs about gun control, but nothing really happened. That was in 2007.

Next on the major radar was Sandy Hook - an elementary school full of children and teachers. One shooter, two serious weapons, and a total of 28 kids and teachers dead by the end of that day in mid-December, 2012. The deaths elicited more discussion about weapon control, but once again, nothing actually was done.

Pulse, an Orlando nightclub, was the target of a mass shooting in 2016 where a single shooter killed 49 and wounded 58 others using a semi-automatic rifle and a semi-automatic pistol. Gun control laws and restrictions were discussed again, but only discussed, not acted upon.

Now we have Las Vegas. On Sunday night, a lone wolf in a high hotel room set up numerous high caliber weapons onto tripods aimed at the venue for an outdoor music concert and festival. At a time he felt was right, he knocked the glass from the windows (not easy to do) and then he started shooting, moving from one weapon to another to another, finally committing suicide before the police broke into the room. Although the final toll has yet to be determined, as of now 59 people are dead and more than 525 injured in the worst mass shooting in US history.

So I have to ask. What will it take to finally get these high-powered guns out of the hands of the general public? When did we, as a nation, become immune to an armed individual taking up a rifle and killing innocent people who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time? I remember the shock we, as a nation, had when Charles Whitman killed 18 and injured 31 others from the clock tower of the University of Texas in 1966. Many point to that specific event as the beginning of this very rocky and blood-filled road. But hindsight is always easier than looking forward. The past can't be changed and the future is uncertain.

Will the very powerful gun lobby in this nation going succeed in pushing yet another mass murder underneath their heavily blood-soaked carpet? Will we, as a nation, allow something like the Las Vegas shooting, to possibly occur yet again in our future? When did reaching out for a high-powered weapon instead of our fists or the pen became the norm? How can we, as a nation, channel our anger into peace?