Early this morning in Las Vegas, a man on the 32nd floor of a nearby hotel began shooting into the crowd of around 22,000 people at a country music concert.  Because of the shooter’s elevated position, there was no effective cover; people on the ground were helpless until he decided to stop shooting them.  He killed at least 58 people, but that number will grow.  The New York Times and the Washington Post are reporting that more than 500 people were wounded during the shooting and the subsequent chaos.  Many sources are calling this the worst mass shooting in modern United States history.

And now I get to watch politicians make things worse.  “Now is not the time to discuss this,” is a common dodge.  If not now, then when?  How many mass shootings do we need before we question ourselves?

Quick question: what’s the average daily number of children under the age of 10 who are shot in the US?  You won’t find the answer in any government health site, because they don’t do that kind of study.   That’s not because they don’t want to.  The gun lobby forbids us from even looking.   And we let them.  What’s wrong with us?

People are dying every day, regularly as clockwork.  Unlike many diseases, guns strike down healthy men, women and children, many with no prior symptoms.  This is a public health disaster, and we’re not even looking.