Seventeen students shot dead in a Florida school. Another school, another attack , more victims, more shooting.

Hundreds of other young victims affected by the ripples of loss, fear, anger and helplessness.

We have seen it all before.

The women around me acknowledged the news but when I suggested that gun control in Australia had been altered after one such disaster, the air was almost visibly choked with a shut down , a motionless space that froze out any discussion. W

as this shock or embarrassment ?

I couldn’t tell because it was a group reaction I had never seen before.

And, as the day wore on I continued to see other strange responses to what, in my eyes, is the greatest avoidance ‘cover up’ of local and national murder…… by individuals, authorities and …..the lack of will of a Nation.

It’s as if the USA is eating itself from the inside while many people seem to be in a thoughtless, senseless and over riding rapture about guns and what they offer. == T

he day continued with TV interviews with some first responders, their bosses and low level politicians.

Parents with rescued children stood next to their kids and gave strangely unemotional accounts about what they saw and heard.

One man, a Mayor, said the perpetrator was the Essence of Evil and I felt we might all swirl back into Medieval times.

I couldn’t comprehend why he thought there might be value in this sort of comment

The killer was 19, had been expelled from two schools, was alone, and had advertised his desire to kill with his own AK whatever it is, in the months leading up to this disaster. He advertised his threats on the Internet but was never picked up. I would have thought that threats to kill are a crime.

I would have thought that failure to intervene is also a Criminal Issue. ===

But for the Mayor the use of the term “pure evil” allows everyone other than the killer to escape responsibility for the shooting.

We know that the perpetrator was a very sick young man who was or had been receiving treatment. We are told his adoptive mother died last year .

I don’t think he was pure evil.

The deaths were pure evil though because, though this young man was receiving help, he still had legal access to guns.

And who is responsible for this and why?.

And in how many ways, are those gun control deniers facilitating these acts of evil?

There is much in America to love but there is a great open wound at its heart that is festering .

There will be a tipping point sometime.

Which way will America tip? What moral code or plain good sense will bring the right to gun access to an end?

And why do so many Americans hang onto to their outdated, dangerous and wacky interpretation about guns and their meaning.

Surely a child is more important than a gun.