I do not mean to dwell but, currently, we got us some personal troubles, family troubles. And yet, in a weird kinda way, it does not always feel like that. Certainly NOT today. Our troubles are real, of course, but they are natural, they are common, they are human and they are – in the most general sense – to be expected over a lifetime. Our troubles will, in time, eventually pass.

But yesterday some poor black kid (16) in Kansas City, Missouri, went to a house where his younger twin brothers were playing, he knocked on the door. He was gonna take them home. It was the wrong house. He was on the wrong block. The homeowner opened the door, looked at the kid and shot him in the head. When the kid fell to the ground, the homeowner shot him again. Then the homeowner closed the door.

Miraculously, the kid, badly wounded, scrambled away. He went to the next house but they would not open the door. The third house he went to the people offered to call the ambulance but only after the kid lay face down on the ground with his hands ‘where they could see ’em’.

The police said that the kid was in hospital and in stable condition. They also said that the homeowner may have had legitimacy because of Missouri’s ‘Stand your ground’ laws. Meaning: self defense. The homeowner is not yet charged. Seems the law there requires the victim to make a statement before the assailant can be charged. The kid is unconscious. Can’t talk. I guess if he dies, they can’t charge the imbecile….no victim’s statement and the owner claiming self-defense. Rittenhouse all over again.

I am naturally upset over losing family members, especially as it is happening right in front of me. But, like I said, in a weird way it is, at the very least, natural. Disease happens. I am 75 and I expect more of mine to go through this and I even expect that I will, too. That’s the natural way of things. Natural is somehow comforting in that light.

But the USA has had something like 150+ mass shootings so far this year and this particular evil in Kansas City is not even classed as a mass shooting. The US had to make a special definition for what constituted ‘mass’ killings and I believe it is four (injured or cleared) but the shooter (often killed by the police or by their own hand) is not counted. They needed a special definition because so many people are shooting and killing each other down there, they had to make a distinction between small shootings and mass shootings. This was a small shooting. That is not normal or natural.

Do not misunderstand me. I am not taking any real consolation in this tragedy. It is appalling and increasingly ugly down there. But I am, strangely, made a bit more accepting of a natural loss when it is compared to an evil, senseless, ugly one. One is just the natural dark side of life, the other is complete and viral insanity. Too much of the USA is mad.

Chapter 2. Yesterday a young woman passenger in a car was shot and killed when the driver used a driveway to turn around. The car pulled in and was pulling out when the 65 year old New Yorker homeowner stepped out onto the porch and put two bullets through the car window. She was white and twenty years old.

Chapter 3. Also yesterday police in New Mexico knocked on a house front door in response to a domestic abuse call to 911. They waited long enough to feel uneasy. It was also the wrong house. At that point, the homeowner opened the door armed. The police shot him dead and exchanged more fire with the also-armed wife.

Chapter 4. Kristi Noem, Republican Governor of South Dakota, proudly addressing the National Rifle Association informed the crowd that her two-year old grandaughter already owned two guns. – a shotgun and a rifle.

And.…….according to CNN, there were seven other mass shootings on Saturday. https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/us/there-were-seven-mass-shootings-on-saturday-the-most-of-any-day-this-year/ar-AA1a0HuN?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=8178cf4046634469bd635dee8d27f472&ei=17