Seventeen dead in a high school. South Florida.

A former student, 19. Armed to the teeth. A semi-automatic AR-15 rifle. Made to kill.

Police officers running to the school, machine guns drawn. A mother texting her son to turn the ringer on his phone off so the killer with the rifle won’t hear it and find him.

A slaughter.

Seventeen dead. At a high school. In America

It has happened before, it happened Wednesday and it will happen again.

Why? Because nothing. We do nothing.

School shooting. Nothing.

School shooting. Nothing.

School shooting. Nothing.

Thoughts and prayers. Don’t talk about guns. Don’t politicize deaths.

Too soon, too soon, too soon.

Thoughts and prayers and thoughts and prayers and thoughts and prayers.

A tweet from the president. The next day, a short statement. No mention of guns. Only mental health.

Seventeen dead.

Don’t talk about guns.

It’s mental health. Mental health, right? Got to fix mental health. Never do, but keep saying it.

Seventeen dead Wednesday. What’s changed since the last one? Nothing. When was the last one? Can’t remember. It’s a blur.

Mass shootings in America — in schools, at concerts, in movie theaters — are a blur.

Read that again: Mass shootings in America are a blur. A blur.

What do we do?

Don’t talk about guns. Evil can’t be stopped. Guns aren’t to blame. Weapons of mass killing have nothing to do with mass killings. Nope.

Listen to the National Rifle Association. The world is scary. You need guns. More. More. More.

Listen to the politicians who get the money from the NRA, which gets the money from the people who make the guns and the bullets and the bulletproof vests we ought to send kids to school wearing so they don’t die when bullets fly from a gun in the hands of a maniac who fell through the cracks and could only have been caught, could only have been stopped, if we had better mental health care or if we had teachers carrying guns or no more gun-free zones or something, anything, that isn’t tougher gun laws.

What do we do?

Cry. Shout. Scream.

Vote?

Nah. Just arm people. Arm ’em all.

Arm the teachers. Arm the janitors. Arm the principal, the front-office manager, the librarian.

Arm your kid. Arm the crossing guard. Arm the bus drivers.

Arm store clerks and salespeople and gas station attendants. Arm mall cops. Arm doctors and nurses and dentists and surgeons. Arm priests, arm nuns and monks and rabbis and imams.

Arm your neighbor. Let your neighbor arm you.

Arm your friends, arm your lovers, arm your aunts, arm your mother, arm your dad and brothers and uncles and aunts, arm your sons and daughters, arm your cousins and in-laws and Facebook friends and every damn person you’ve ever met and keep them armed at all times, for they are the good guys with guns who will fend off the bad guys with guns, and don’t you talk for a minute — not a minute — about gun laws because it’s too soon and you’re politicizing a tragedy and no, no, no, no, no, no, no you mustn’t infringe on any American’s freedom to own and bear and fire and fetishize firearms even if it keeps costing life after life after life in places where young human beings should feel safe.

Arm ’em all. That’s the answer. That’s what the NRA wants.

Seventeen dead in a high school. Massacred. Nothing we could’ve done, right? Mental health, right?

Now back to the blur. On to the next time. On to nothing.

Tougher gun laws wouldn’t have stopped those schoolchildren in Florida from dying, right?

So what allowed it?

What do we tell those parents? Grieving. Heartbroken. Ruined.

This is what I’ll tell them. This is what I’ll tell the NRA. This is what I’ll tell politicians who line their pockets with blood money and sit on their hands.

This is what I’ll say: I don’t know exactly what would’ve stopped children from being murdered at a South Florida high school. But I know for certain that what allowed it to happen was America doing nothing. America doing what it always does in the wake of slaughters.

Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

Nothing gets us 17 dead on the ground in a high school.

Nothing is insanity.

Nothing has to stop.

rhuppke@chicagotribune.com

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