I read a post from a guy who doesn’t like me very much and was startled by how closely his views aligned with my own. His post started:

“Last Saturday morning I rode my bike past the Sarasota Fairgrounds. A steady stream of people were entering the exhibit hall for a ‘gun show’ where you could buy just about any kind of firearm you’d want to have. I wondered if someone would be buying a gun that would be used against other human beings.”

What a coincidence! I too rode my bike past a fairgrounds except I was in a car passing a hardware store with a prominent sign out front announcing that drain cleaner was on sale. I wondered if someone would be buying drain cleaner to poison other human beings.

Later in the day, The Washington Post reported that people had been killed in a mass shooting at a grocery store and I remembered Sandy Hook, and Stoneman Douglass High School, and January 6th, and Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, and cyanide in Tylenol bottles, and Socrates being forced to drink Hemlock— and I felt sad. Is an unclogged drain worth the life of another human being? Really?

We scream, “Never again” after every tragic act of violence. Then, there is another tragic act of violence and we scream, ‘Never again,” again. After every horrifying evil we scream our protests and it changes nothing. The perpetrators of senseless violence don’t care how much we scream. We need a new plan.

I suggest we scream at law abiding citizens. Shame them for buying drain cleaner or rat poison or weed killer or any other toxic chemical that could end up in the hands of a white supremacist. Ridicule them for prioritizing convenience over the lives of their neighbors. January 6th changed everything. Never again!

If not you, who? You can assert that it’s not your problem to solve. You can say, “it’s a minefield, I’m just not going there.” You can say, “I’m just not ready. I don’t know enough. I need to pray more about it.” The time for prayer is over. What can one person do? You can shriek at people who have committed no crime.

Will you lose some friends? Of course! Some people won’t appreciate your crusade. People are dying. Anyone who is annoyed by your righteous hectoring is unworthy of friendship anyway.

If you’re content to simply not commit murder yourself, you are part of the problem. Voice your outrage! Let the world know that you have feelings. Whoever yells the loudest, cares the most.

(Psalm 92:6) “The senseless man does not know, fools do not understand, that though the wicked spring up like grass and all evildoers flourish, they will be forever destroyed.”