One Year After Sandy Hook

It should have been awake up call but we are still asleep.  Andy Borowitz (New Yorker blogger extraordinaire) posted that yesterday, along with a post about how Americans are safe from gun violence as long as they stay out of schools, movie theaters, malls, their driveways, their workplace, their homes, highways.....yes, if we cease to exist we might indeed be insulated from gun violence.  He has really nailed the variety of ways we think about this that keep us exactly where we are--in the year since 20 elementary school children were shot dead in their school, not one month has passed without another school shooting.

His post today is the epitome of what I like to call passive aggressive humor (http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/borowitzreport/2013/01/nra-defends-right-to-own-politicians.html)--that as long as we have politicians who are bought and paid for by powerful lobbys, and we continue to vote for them, nothing will change.  Despite all the evidence to the contrary, I have a glimmer of hope that it might be possible that money won't buy everything. Unfortunately that hope does not extend to addressing gun violence. I feel like it is our approach to renewable energy and climate change--if we do not have one solution to a complex problem, then it is doomed.  These are complex problems and the solutions will be equally complex--unfortunately we live in a black and white country (literally and figuratively), and nuance is not something we are good at.  I know that, so I pause to be sad about it on this ever so tragic anniversary.