AFTER THE SHOOTING STOPS

It's one of these double posting days.

For years I've been a fan of shows like Law and Order (the original, not the spin offs), Blue Bloods and the original Hawaii 5-O. And this didn't hit me until yesterday.

Another mass shooting. At a school. We focus on the victims and their families. And we should. These kids are dead. We will never know how these future moms, dads, cops, doctors, lawyers and Indian Chiefs would have done for themselves, their families, our country.

The other day a has been, right wing evangelical opined that there had been doctors who could have cured cancer. Sent by God. But they had been aborted before they had the chance. Hey gun lovers! Maybe one or more of those kids could have discovered a universal cure for cancer but they were brutally murdered by a nut with access to guns, ammo, and an attitude of heaven knows what.

And, sorry for the diversion, what about the men and women who respond to these terrorist attacks? The police officers, the sheriff's deputies, the EMT's, the forensics crew, the chaplains? The ones who separate the living from the wounded and the dead. The men and women who transport the wounded to the ER. And the ER crews who find themselves caring for kids whose biggest worry that mornig was a math test. The crews who mark where the dead fell, bag the bodies and take them to the morgue. The doctors who do autopsies on kids who just might remind them of their own families. the forensics crews who bag evidence and try to find all the bullets that didn't end up on a body.

Who gathers the names and addresses of the victims? Who works through the crowd on the other side of the crime scene tape asking "do you know this person?" Cell phones that can take pictures. Or can they get ID pictures from an office staff that is probably standing there with that thousand mile stare?

AND HOW IN BLOODY HELL DO YOU CONTACT THE FAMILIES OF THE DEAD AND WOUNDED? Forgive me for shouting. Do you send officers to homes and offices. Do you call and say, what the hell do you say?

How many more bodies and nightmares will it take to pull this piece of real estate between lines on  map back to something resembling sanity? I can't call it a nation. Because is sure as hell isn't.