Here we are again, and nothing has changed at all

Here we are again.

The venue changes, the situation is different but basically the same. Someone has taken a gun and started shooting people, and the only question is how many will be dead or wounded by the time the shooter is stopped.

Of course we are horrified.

"Again?" we ask, even though we know deep down that there will always be an "again" as long as we continue along the same path.

For we have made choices in the way we live, and one of those choices is that it's too difficult to stand up to the fanatics and get anything done when it comes to keeping guns away from people who shouldn't have them.

We paint the Second Amendment as an absolute right, when even the National Rifle Association didn't see it that way until 1968, when they realized that people who weren't white were getting their hands on guns.

They paint the Founding Fathers as men who wanted everyone armed, so that they could rebel against an oppressive government, when nothing any of them wrote at the time suggested that fact. In fact, the idea of having guns in the hands of a citizen militia was so the country would not be required to have a large standing army.

At the Navy Yard.

That was something the Founders feared far more than another King George.

And of course, they lived in a far different country than the one we now inhabit. A nation of 3 million people living along the Atlantic coast was a nation in which someone who couldn't succeed could head for the frontier and try again.

In a nation of 300 million, with opportunity seemingly vanishing for millions of people, there aren't a lot of second chances. People find themselves in bad situations and don't see good options. They may not be able to pay their bills, but they've got a gun.

So whether it's a school, or a theater or a political rally or a military base, somebody starts shooting and people die. And almost before the bodies are cold, the forces of the right are marshalling their forces to stand against any changes in the way we deal with guns.

Think about this if you will: These people don't even want to require people selling guns to check the terrorist watch list to make sure they're not selling guns to enemies of our country.

It would be an inconvenience to buyers and sellers to require that.

Consider one more thing. There are a lot of other countries in the world where people are free, including some where people have more freedom than we do in our country. But there are no other free countries in which these shootings happen.

Canada, Australia, Great Britain, France, Japan, Germany ... The list goes on and on.

What's the difference between them and us?

It isn't the frontier, as many say. Canada had a frontier and so did Australia, and they don't kill each other like we do.

Nobody does.

It seems to me we ought to be thinking about that.