The violence that erupts continually in an “advanced” country has trapped me in a morbid rumination that has two horns.

First: Given our pervasive gun culture, along with the persistence of capital punishment as a remedy-at-law, why is the firing squad not used more widely outside Utah as an instrument of execution? A well-aimed volley of shots to the head or heart is quicker than the electric chair, gas chamber, or lethal injection.

Second: The current measure for an American “mass” shooting is three fatalities. Under that standard, given the firepower available to almost everyone, we will keep having mass shootings every few days. Let the count be five. Or ten. Anything less can be dismissed as a “group” shooting!

We have little apparent recourse but to adapt our idiom to the folly we abet.

(c) 2019 JMN