Many Wisconsin grocery stores have magazine sections that look a lot like this.

Each week when I go to my local suburban Wisconsin grocery store, I check out the magazines to see if there are any guitar magazines. There usually aren’t. Instead, I see the above every time I stand in front of the magazines. This picture was taken at what would be a child’s eye level, more easily accessible to everyone than the magazines in the top rows that I can’t even reach. Obviously, a few of these are about hunting — animals. But most are about guns that are designed to shoot and kill human beings.

First of all, I cannot believe that there are this many different magazines about assault weapons and other non-hunting guns. Secondly, I can’t believe that the store sells so many of them that it can’t give up one space for a guitar magazine. But why would they carry so many if they didn’t sell them? These magazines have been in this store for years, and the number seems to be increasing each year.

It sickens me — frightens me — that many of the people who live in my community buy these magazines and, I assume, also have this type of weaponry in their homes.

I took this picture the day after I took my car to a large car dealership’s service department to have some work done. There were about 40 people in the waiting room. The television was on. Breaking news: 14 people had just been killed in a mass shooting in San Bernardino. As I looked around the waiting room, I was shocked to see that only about three people out of 40 were watching the TV. The rest looked absolutely uninterested in what was happening. I saw no shock, no grief, no tears, no praying, no nothing. If anybody cared about the great number of human beings that were once again the victims of gun violence in this country, I certainly couldn’t tell by their reactions.

In spite of President Obama stating over and over again that we can’t treat this as the “new normal,” I have news for him: a lot of Americans already think it is so normal, so commonplace, that they don’t even pay attention to it anymore. More important to them: when will my car be done?

It is a sobering thought that trips to the grocery store and a car dealership turn into epiphanies about the current gun situation in this country. It really disturbs me to know that there are people in the same building with me who think that it’s not only appropriate to read these magazines but who probably own these types of weapons. And with Wisconsin’s new conceal carry law, I’m sure that at any given time, there are several people in the grocery store who are carrying. And oh, by the way, this is a quintessential white suburban “Christian” community.

I recently attended a town hall meeting with my state representative, who is a very conservative Republican representing a very conservative district (I am very outnumbered). The meeting took place before last week’s mass shooting in California. The topic turned to guns in schools. I said that with the type of weaponry these mass killers have, what could a teacher like myself possibly do with a little concealed handgun to stop these guys? One of the women said with a laugh, “Well, I was a teacher, and I would take him out.”

Has she seen these magazines? Has she seen how many of these mass killers have body armor? Has she seen how highly trained SWAT teams approach these killers with caution? Oh, but she could take out a mass shooter with a handgun while she’s teaching children, no problem.

I mentioned that on the Oregon campus where there was a mass shooting recently, several army veterans with conceal carry guns were in the area. All of them decided that shooting their guns would do more harm than good and kept them holstered. And these are people who have been trained to use guns in chaotic and violent situations. Nobody responded to that comment.

Are these people so far removed from the reality of gun violence that they really don’t grasp the horror and the human cost of it? And worse, what do they all plan to do with these assault weapons?

Why? Why does America have so many magazines that promote assault weapons? Why does America have so many people who buy them? Why does American have so many people who own assault weapons? Why? What in God’s name do these self-proclaimed Christians plan to do with these weapons? Should I begin to worry about being liberal and not having matching weaponry?

I fear that the proverbial horse is already out of the barn on gun control. In some areas of the country, like mine, so many people are already armed to the teeth for...what? A revolution? Surviving in a country that might fall apart, thanks in no small part to the Christian white supremacist fear-mongering that is being spewed by the leading Republican candidates for president?

Have we reached some awful tipping point in gun violence in this country that promoting assault weapons in grocery stores and not reacting to mass shootings IS the new normal? Are we truly living in some pre-Civil War, “Us vs. Them” type of country that is about to experience a major bloodbath of an internal war? I hope not. I hope to live in a world with more guitar magazines than gun magazines.