Yes, common sense gun control regulations are necessary.

I see no need for civilians to be in possession of military-style assault rifle firearms such as the AK-47 or the AR-15, the Gatling gun or the machine gun. Those weapons are designed for warfare.

Right now, the Ukrainians would like to get their hands on as many military-style assault rifles as they can as they fend off Russian military aggression.

Keeping and using a long-barreled rifle for deer hunting or target practice is legitimate. I have hunted in Wisconsin. And I grew up with my family being avid big and small game hunters. My father loved hunting pheasants in southern Wisconsin with his faithful bird dog flushing out the birds.

The Wisconsin Thanksgiving week deer hunting season was not enough for my dad. He would travel to Montana and Wyoming for elk and mule deer. One time he brought home a bear, but at the time moose and buffalo were off limits.

There is no reason to use an AK-47 to fell a 10-point buck. A 30.06 does a fine job. It can also be used for elk, bear, and moose.

My father was an NRA member, but he never owned an AK-47 or an AR-15. He owned a 30.06, a 30-30 and an M-1. I learned to shoot using daddy's M-1.

Also keeping a pistol handy for protection against home invasion is within reason. A man's home is his castle. And at times that castle and castle dwellers (the family) have to be defended with deadly force. A baseball bat just doesn't cut the mustard or crack a head.

But there's more to the equation than gun control which has turned toxically political.

THE SECOND AMENDMENT

When the Second Amendment was penned in 1791, the authors were dealing with single shot muzzle-loading muskets and flintlock pistols.

The Second Amendment reads: "A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

Parsing the words "militia" basically means an armed civilian force backing up the rag-tag military in a time of extraordinary need.

We now have a well-trained military to provide the necessary security needed for a free state. Civilians rarely take up arms to defend the government.

Nowadays the National Guard acts as the "well-regulated militia," since it is basically made up of civilians doing their civic duty during the time of civil crisis. Even my father was a Civil Air Patrol pilot. He liked to fly small single engine airplanes and had his civilian pilot's license.

I remember as a kid the Wisconsin National Guard being called up during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis and then again, nearly 30 years later, in 1991 when Desert Shield turned into Desert Storm.

To this day, the National Guard's symbol of readiness is the Minuteman as represented by the statue in Concord, Massachusetts which depicts a young Patriot farmer clutching his trusty musket in one hand and his other hand resting on his plow with his coat thrown over the crossbar. The farmer, turned Minuteman, was headed to help protect Lexington and Concord from the soon-to-be invading British forces during the very beginning hours of the Revolutionary War.

That call-to-arms, in part, was sounded by Paul Revere during his famed Midnight Ride which is forever memorialized by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem Paul Revere's Ride.

The Old North Church played a vital role in that famous nocturnal ride. In 1775, the North Church was Church of England Anglican. It was founded in 1723 and is officially called Christ Church in the City of Boston. However, at the start of the Revolutionary War -- during the wee hours of April 19, 1775 -- it was the "young" North Church, being barely 50 years old at the time.

Christ Church in the City of Boston is located at 193 Salem Street on the northern end of the city. Hence the moniker the "North Church."

Today the now "old" North Church is a year shy of being 300-years-old. It is considered the oldest church building in Boston. And it still houses an active Episcopal parish and it is now a part of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts.

But on that night so long ago, April 18, 1775, Paul Revere, a silversmith by trade, was looking for a lighted lantern signal as a sign from the North Church tower: "If the British march ...
By land or sea from the town to-night,
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry-arch
Of the North-Church-tower, as a signal-light, --
One if by land, and two if by sea;
And I on the opposite shore will be,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and farm,
For the country-folk to be up and to arm."

It was two lanterns which briefly lit up the North Church tower signaling that the British were coming by sea.

I learned that historic poem in class when school children were still required to memorize swatches of historical documents and literature.

And to this day I can recite Longfellow's poem from memory:
"Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five:
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year ..."

I also learned the Gettysburg Address (Abraham Lincoln); the Preamble to the Constitution (Gouverneur Morris); O Captain! My Captain! (Walt Whitman); the 23rd Psalm (King David); the Gospel Nativity Narrative (St. Luke); Horton Hatches the Egg (Dr. Seuss); and my favorite, The First Snowfall (James Russell Lowell).

The Second Amendment ensures the right of the citizens to keep and bear arms.

However, the Founding Fathers were dealing with muskets and flintlock pistols. They never envisioned the type of weaponry that are used, and more importantly, abused today.

During Colonial times, guns were vital to a household. They were used to provide meat for the family. A deer for venison, wild turkey and rabbit for the dinner table. Guns also provided protection against invaders -- be they two legged or four legged -- for the well-being and safety of the family.

I would imagine if the Second Amendment were to be penned today it would be written differently, taking into account the type of firearms we now have and the political climate.

I do not see common sense gun control laws as an infringement against the Second Amendment. The people would still have "the right to keep and bear arms" but with practical limitations and community safeguards in place.

It makes no common sense that an 18-year-old cannot belly-up-to-the-bar for a beer, but waltz to a gun store for an AR-15.

LAWS AND RULES IGNORED

Several protocols were ignored which helped to foster the deadly Uvalde school incident.

First, Texas has a "Thou-shalt-not-carry-a-gun-onto-school-property" law. The shooter ignored it and brought a gun to the Uvalde elementary school, thus breaking a Texas -- and federal -- gun law which was already firmly established and in place since 1990. The shooter committed a felony by bringing a firearm onto Texas school property, not that he cared.

Secondly: The Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District requires that teachers keep classroom doors closed and locked during school hours. Obviously that was ignored, the shooter had easy access into a classroom.

In addition, for convenience's sake a teacher propped open an outer side door. It was reported the teacher was going to the car to retrieve a cell phone and left the door ajar for easier access. This is how the shooter got into the school to begin with. The teacher blatantly ignored school safety standards, apparently not wanting to take the extra time and steps needed to walk around to the school's front entrance.

Robb Elementary School also has a fence wrapping around the school property. The shooter easily jumped the fence so that chain link barrier was not a prime deterrent.

Thirdly: After the assailant got into the school, police response was anemic. It is an established fact that the local school police did not follow their training and established protocol as well as got into a tiff with other arriving law enforcement agencies over jurisdiction. It took more than an hour for the Texas Border Patrol to out maneuver the school's police presence and bring down the shooter, thus ending the classroom siege.

But, it does absolutely no good to have laws on the books -- including stricter gun laws -- if they are going to be ignored in the first place. Same thing goes for school safety protocols where teachers disregard what is required of them for the safety and protection of the students entrusted to them.

THE POLITICAL QUAGMIRE

Of course, politics is in the mix. The cry goes up: "DO SOMETHING!!" But no one can agree on what to do and how to do it.

Hard-core Republicans want to protect Second Amendment rights at all costs, and hard-nosed Democrats want to get rid of guns, maybe even the BB gun, and gut the Second Amendment.

Yet the First Amendment right for Freedom of Religion and religious liberty is not as vigorously defended as evidenced in the recent COVID restrictions and church lockdowns. Even pastors, priests and parishioners were arrested, jailed, and fined for worshipping in familiar prayer space. Yet abortion mills and liquor stores remained open because they were considered "necessary" for the well-being of the wider community.

But on gun control, both political sides embrace their hard party line with no wiggle room. There is no meeting of minds in the middle. There is no common ground for the sake of the whole. There is no give-and-take. There is no political cooperation.

Immediately, the Uvalde shooting became political. Beto O'Rourke, who is running for Texas governor on the Democratic ticket, confronted incumbent Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott at a live news conference in Uvalde, the day after the Texas school was awash with blood.

The news conference turned out to be a shouting match with O'Rourke proclaiming his disdain and the governor's team mouthing back at him while trying to escort the political candidate from the venue.

"Gov. Abbott, I have to say something: The time to stop the next shooting is right now! And you are doing nothing," O'Rourke prefaced. "You said this 'is not predictable.' This is totally predictable! This is on you, until you choose to do something different."

"You're out of line and an embarrassment," Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick shot back.

"Sir, you're out of line," shouted Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin. "You're a sick *** ** * ***** who would come to a deal like this to make a political issue."

CHILDREN SHOOTING CHILDREN

School shootings are normally not white-on-black crime or black-on-white crime; black-on-black crime or white-on-white crime, but children-shooting-children crime.

Many of the school shooters are angry teenagers. They have become rootless and ruthless. Many times, there is no father in the home to give fatherly guidance and direction with unconditional love and fatherly discipline and to be a much-needed masculine adult role model. There is no one to be accountable to or accountable for.

Some of these young men are born to never-married single mothers who work dead end minimum wage jobs while struggling to make ends meet with a fistful of food stamps. The family is made up of several fatherless children crowded into public housing and this family setting is now considered normative.

If these troubled teens are still in school, they are isolated and are many times subjected to bullying -- what was called "teasing" during my school hood days. Many-a-day I went home in tears because I was being teased (due to my birth defects and disability), but I had a strong father figure to be in my corner.

But it is not just the schools that are being shot up by troubled teens. Angry young men are roaming the streets of Chicago, and Detroit, and Los Angeles, and Miami, and Milwaukee, and Philadelphia, and Houston, and New York, and ...

The body counts pile up on the weekends and/or holidays. And there are already strong gun laws in place, even some tougher firearm laws than are in Texas. The laws seem to make little or no difference. They are ignored by the modern-day gangsters -- black or white, Hispanic or Oriental. Skin color doesn't seem to make any difference. All races are fighting and guns seem to be their weapon of choice.

The frustration builds and it spills over into violence. Gun violence and shooting sprees seem to be a way for gang members to vent their frustrations or prove their manhood and battle over disputed turf.

The Uvalde school shooter was not even born when the 1999 Columbine school shooting occurred. He was born five years later in 2004 and grew up in an era of mass shootings, including those at schools, the workplace, churches, public events, and military bases. Such violence has become commonplace for today's youth.

The list of children killing children stretches back to before the Columbine school shooting event which first put deadly school violence on the map. But those deadly incidents are escalating.

The list includes:
1993: Chuck E. Cheese (Colorado) 15-year-old;
1998: Westside Middle School (Arkansas) 11-year-old & 13-year-old;
1998: Thurston High School (Oregon) 15-year-old;
1999: Columbine High School (Colorado) 17-year-old & 18-year-old;
2005: Red Lake Indian Reservation (Minnesota) 16-year-old member of the Ojibwe Tribe;
2007: Westroads Mall (Nebraska) 19-year-old;
2014: Maryland-Pilchuck High School (Washington State) 15-year-old;
2018: Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School (Florida) 19-year-old;
2018: Santa Fe High School (Texas) 17-year-old;
2019: Gilroy Garlic Festival (California) 19-year-old person of color;
2021: Oxford High School (Michigan) 15-year-old;
2022: Tops supermarket (New York) 18-year-old; and
2022: Robb Elementary School (Texas) 18-year-old Hispanic.

QUESTIONS TO BE ASKED

Would a father in the home -- in a traditional two-parent family -- make a difference? Would a stable home life make a difference? Would parental love and strong guidance make a difference?

What are these children shooting children seeking? Notoriety -- their 15 minutes of fame in the news? A way to settle the score and make up for perceived injustices? Poor impulse control due to negative influences? A steady diet of violence from the Internet, in the movies, on TV and from playing video games?

Where is God?

RED FLAG FLYING

In today's Internet world young people post their thoughts and feelings, writings and pictures on YouTube and Facebook and Instagram and Tiktok. The Uvalde school shooter was no different. He telegraphed, via the Internet, his deadly intentions.

But they were ignored.

People have a tendency to not want to get involved.

Excuses abound: It's not my business ... I don't want to get anyone in trouble ... I didn't think he was serious ...

It's only later that the red flags are recognized as indicators of future violent behavior, but then it's too late.

ADDING GOD TO THE EQUATION

What is the first thing that happens when a mass shooting of any kind takes place?

Prayer!

You hear over and over again: "Our thoughts and our prayers are with you." The governor says it, the school board chairman says it, the news anchor says it, the mayor says it, the neighbors say it.

God is the immediate afterthought. But He has been kicked out of the school and He has been kicked out of the public square. Although when things fall through, when things don't go as planned, when evil enters through the side door -- it is then that God is finally invoked. It is only then that it is convenient to bring God in on a purely limited basis -- just long enough to get through the rough part.

Children are long longer taught right from wrong using the Ten Commandments as the basis for morality. Their parents are unmarried. There is no father in the home. Church attendance dwindles. Boys are told they can be girls and vice versa.

Children know more about Santa Claus than they do about the Baby Jesus. Easter is merely a sign of spring complete with bunnies and brightly colored eggs.

POLICE INCOMPETENCE AND COWARDNESS

As a timeline is being pieced together, minute by minute and second by second, it has become painfully obvious that the local school police failed miserably in stopping the shooter in his tracks.

The police froze. Peace officers failed to engage the shooter as minutes ticked by and the terrified children repeatedly called 911 pleading, begging, imploring that the police be sent in to save them. Outside the school, anxious parents were tearfully urging the police to intervene and were handcuffed for causing interference.

The Uvalde school children called 911 at least 10 times, whispering terrified pleas for police intervention. They were doing exactly what they were taught to do during Robb Elementary School shooting drills -- hide and call 911. Many children today have a cell phone.

Yet more than a dozen local law enforcement officers gathered in the hall outside the classroom and did nothing until a Border Patrol agent, acting on his own, decided it was time to end the shooting situation and stepped in to do something.

There were armed officers from various law enforcement agencies that were on the school grounds at the time of the shooting, including: the Texas Rangers, the Texas Highway Patrol, the Texas Department of Public Safety, the Uvalde Sheriff's Office, the Uvalde Police Department, the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Police Department, the Uvalde County Constables, and the US Border Patrol from the Uvalde Station.

It took more than an hour for the police -- in the form of a courageous Border Patrol agent -- to take charge and step in and take decisive action.

When the Border Patrol Agent was done doing something, the shooter lay dead and medical responders were finally able to render assistance to the injured and bleeding grade school children.

Journalists on the ground report that the school's own chief law enforcement officer failed to follow specified school shooting training. It is alleged there were concerns about personal physical safety. And apparently, the school district's police chief misconstrued the unfolding situation thinking it had turned into a hostage situation rather than remaining an active shooting situation. So, as the Incident Commander, he kept his, and other law enforcement officers, at bay while waiting for backup and specialized equipment, including a janitor's door key.

Days later, the Director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, Col. Steven McCraw told the press that the decision to not enter the classroom sooner was the wrong decision. Officers should have confronted the shooter immediately.

"From the benefit of hindsight where I'm sitting now, of course it was not the right decision," McCraw said of the call not to immediately confront the shooter. "It was the wrong decision. Period. There's no excuse for that."

The first priority in any school shooting situation is to STOP THE KILLING by neutralizing the shooter.

In a CNN interview, Texas Department of Public Safety Lt. Chris Olivarez said responding officers waited to enter the school building out of a personal concern they'd be shot themselves.

"At that point, if they pursued it any further -- not knowing where the suspect was at -- they could've been shot," Olivarez explained. "They could've been killed and, at that point, that gunman would have the opportunity to kill other people inside that school."

"As first responders we must recognize that innocent life must be defended," the Active School Shooter Training Manual teaches. "A first responder unwilling to place the lives of the innocent above their own safety should consider another career field."

Following the school shooting, Gov. Abbott was briefed by local officials before his first news conference where he praised the police for their heroic actions.

It was not until another account of the events emerged from the parents and 911 tapes that the full scope of police inaction was being unveiled.

As a result, Gov. Abbott was livid at being deceived and perhaps outright lied too.

"I am livid about what happened," the Texas Governor said in another Uvalde school shooting press conference. "The information I was given turned out, in part, to be inaccurate, and I am absolutely livid about that."

The Uvalde school shooting is not the result of one big thing. It is the collective failure of many smaller things which all knotted together to form another school catastrophe.

The FBI and the Justice Department have now stepped in to get to the bottom of the police inaction and when their investigations are completed -- heads will certainly roll.

EVIL INVADES THE HUMAN HEART

What is evil?

Evil is defined as profoundly immoral and wicked.

Theologically, evil is an opposition to God.

Thomas Aquinas defines evil as "the absence or privation of good" in his Summa Theologica.

Evil and death go hand-in-hand. Evil never promotes and protects life.

There is no understanding evil, it is incomprehensible.

There is no shortage of evil in the world through people and events.

Satan is evil.

Adolf Hitler was evil.

The Holocaust was evil.

Idi Amin was evil.

Nero was evil.

Slave Trade was/is evil.

Selling Joseph into slavery was evil.

Pearl Harbor was evil.

Enslavement of the Israelites was evil.

Cane's killing of Abel was evil.

David's planned murder of Uriah was evil.

Ivan the Terrible was evil.

The Tiananmen Square Massacre was evil.

Murder is evil.

The English Reformation executions were evil.

The Saint James Anglican Church Massacre was evil.

The Poppy Day Bombings were evil.

The Oklahoma City Bombing was evil.

The Mai Lai Massacre was evil.

BLM Riots were evil.

The French Revolution was evil.

The Bolshevik Revolution was evil.

The Ayatollah Khomeini was evil.

Saddam Hussein was evil.

The Persecution of Christians is evil.

Unibomber was evil.

Mass shootings are evil.

The Trail of Tears was evil.

Dr. Joseph Mengele was evil.

What Vladimir Putin is doing in Ukraine is evil.

Judas' betrayal of Jesus was evil.

The Taliban is evil.

War Crimes are evil.

Gang violence is evil.

9/11 was evil.

Ripping a child out of its mother's womb is evil.

The Uvalde school shooting, too, is just the latest in a growing list of evil events that capture the headlines.

Mary Ann Mueller is a journalist living in Texas. She is a regular contributor to VirtueOnline