A Rock On My Heart

          Three nights ago while I was sitting at the kitchen table my husband Tom called to me from the family room where he sat at his computer.  
           "Another shooting," he said. "At a mushroom farm near San Francisco. Eight shot, seven dead."
        My immediate response was...nothing. Not anger. Not outrage. Not grief. It was strange. It was as if I'd been struck by mental and emotional paralysis. I couldn't even dredge up anything to say about this horrific news. I felt out of words. After a few moments I managed to say, rather half-heartedly, "That's terrible." 
             How can I explain it? It was if it it were too much effort to feel anything. It was if there were a rock on my heart that I didn't have the strength to lift. 
​        Less than 48 hours  earlier eleven people had been gunned to death at a dance hall in Monterey Park, a community a few miles east of downtown Los Angeles. They were older people, mostly Asian, people in their 50's, 60's and 70's, murdered by a 72-year-old madman with an assault rifle. They were people's parents and grandparents and they liked to go out dancing. And now they're gone.

        As are the seven people who used to work at the mushroom farm.

       As are all the men, women and children in this country who've been indiscriminately slaughtered by men brandishing assault weapons. And as will be all the men, women, and children who will continue to be indiscriminately slaughtered by men brandishing assault weapons.

      It occurred to me that the rock I was feeling was hopelessness. Hopelessness that there was anything I could do or say or feel that would make any difference in the epidemic in this country of random mass shootings by men with assault weapons.
         I've written letters to my representatives. I've written letters to my local newspaper.
       I've gone to protests calling for a ban on assault weapons.

       I've taken part in sit-ins in congressmen's offices

      I've written dozens of blog posts  calling for better gun control.

       I even wrote a protest song.

       But what does anything I do matter? What does anything any American citizen says or does matter when our lawmakers, the only ones who have the power to end the violence by passing sensible gun laws, won't do anything because they're in the pockets of the gun lobby?  

       Congressional and Senate Republicans kill every bill calling for the ban of assault weapons,

...and they've stopped even pretending that they care about the lives that are taken away by gun violence. After the last two shootings within this past week they haven't even bothered to offer their  phony old pious "thoughts and prayers" pablum. I suppose they believe they don't need to bother anymore. They must know how hopelessly worn-down people like me with rocks on their hearts are.
         And yet the other day as I was driving home from the supermarket listening to the news on the radio I heard that President Biden has again called for an assault weapons ban. 
         "Oh, thank you," I said to the radio. And the rock lifted a millimeter.