Are they tributes, these students, and the ones that came before? Blood sacrifice to the gods? Are they offered to placate, does their slaughter keep us safe from something worse? Whatever could be worse?

I’m tired of trying to understand indefensible acts, tired of seeking reasons why. Like most of you, I just want it to stop.

We will respond with cries of outrage and pleas to Congress to do something. And Congress will do nothing. The students at Marjorie Taylor will be offered trauma counseling, and another round of active shooter drills. And thoughts and prayers. And we’ll move on, until the next time it happens.

And the time after that.

I want to be wrong. I won’t be wrong.

As author Daniel Quinn writes, our response to social dysfunction is akin to placing ambulances at the bottom of a cliff to tend to those who drive their cars over the edge. Heaven forfend we actually put guardrails at the top of the cliff, or redirect the road, or switch to another mode of transportation altogether, one far less likely to send us over the edge in the first place.

Tributes. Sacrifices.

When upholding an ideology — the right to bear arms — outweighs the right to not be murdered by some berserker with a gun, we need more than ambulances. We need to figure out what happened to our soul.