Dear Editor,

Have we really become numb to the carnage? Are we really going to let this be what defines us as a nation? How long are we going to put up with leaders disregarding our pleas for something to change? Why does this keep happening?

The unfortunate reality is that mass shootings have become as American as apple pie. It is ingrained into our DNA. It has made its way into our educational curriculum. It has changed the way we live our everyday lives. We are truly unique, in that no other developed nation in the world has a gun violence epidemic as extreme as ours. However, what is infuriating is our response to such atrocities.

Thoughts and prayers, trendy hashtags, cardboard signs, condemnations, photo ops with crying families and “(insert city name) strong” tweets. These are dollar value band-aids used on severe wounds that need so much more. It is such a pathetic and futile way to stop preventable tragedies. We believe we are doing enough, yet the headlines show otherwise.

America has just experienced the deadliest elementary school shooting since Sandy Hook in 2012. Nothing has changed a decade from now. We have leaders with no backbone and with a disturbing disregard for humanity. While they sit in their thrones of power forged by the donations of reprehensible lobbyists, they watch their constituents get massacred and display no concern for the safety of their own citizens.

If Snapchat videos of high school students bleeding to death are not enough, if witnessing the pitiful misery of parents losing their child forever is not enough, if elderly churchgoers suffering an undignified departure from this Earth on sacred grounds is not enough, if the mental picture of children having lead projectiles penetrate their underdeveloped organs, striking the cold floor and gasping their final breaths is not enough, we are disgustingly inhumane.

Richard Sanchez
Fort Wayne