May 2022

I write short fiction, flash fiction, essays and novels. This month’s Tease is from an essay in progress.
This week marked the 200th U.S. mass shooting of 2022, a year that is only 145 days old. Over 30 of those incidents have involved schools and children. This reminds me of the epidemic of drunk driving fatalities in the late seventies and early eighties. I myself lost five friends in my last two years of high school. It’s hard to imagine now, but these numbers were not abnormal. Somehow they were seen as acceptable. Until MADD formed.
In today’s world, intoxicated driving is still a problem, but greatly reduced and no longer ignored as an inevitable, unavoidable tragedy that we are somehow unable to stop.
Does that last part sound familiar?
It’s time for a new movement. Perhaps MASS. Mothers Against School Shootings. By any name, or none at all, it is past time for a change.