NEXT TIME.

It will happen again.

Four people were shot to death in a school in Georgia.  Two are reportedly students; two are reportedly teachers.  None of them returned home.

          Other people were injured because they were also shot in the school in Georgia.  They are in the hospital.  They are not in school today.

          Next time a person with a rifle and ammunition may murder people from a hotel window in Las Vegas, Nevada.

          Next time a person with an assault rifle and ammunition may murder scores of children and their teachers in an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.

          Or in Newtown, Massachusetts.

          Next time, a person with an automatic rifle and ammunition may murder lots of people at the Mall of the Americas.

          Or at a mall near you.

          Or in a movie theater.

          Or in your church or in your synagogue.

          But no-one should pretend to be surprised when it happens again.  It will happen again.

          Something else may not happen, though.  It may be that nothing will be done to stop it from happening the next time, nothing by those who alone have the power to stop it.

          There may be marches and protests after the next time.  Perhaps even after this time.  The marches and protests may even draw the attention of a nation, as they did in the wake of the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

          There may be overwhelming support among the people for something to be done, for the next time not to happen next time or ever.  There is overwhelming popular support for that now.

          But it is not enough.  We know that it is not enough because it keeps happening.

          I have no doubt that Almighty God hears the prayers of the people.  But God works through people and the people have not yet stopped this.

          It will happen again.

          Unless.

          Unless justice rolls down the mountainside like a mighty river, to borrow an image from the Prophet Amos.  Unless the people refuse any longer to accept their representatives’ excuses or, heaven forbid, the emptiness of ‘thoughts and prayers.’

          Unless the people demand that gun dealers and manufacturers stop selling their automatic rifles and ammunition to children, or to psychopaths, or to cartels in this country or in foreign places.

          Unless the Second Amendment is respected as something more than a shroud for the bodies of infants mutilated by gunfire.

          Unless these shadows are altered, it will happen again.

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