"Hopes and Prayers" (tm)

Several thoughts occurred yesterday with the shootings all over the news.

The first is most obvious, how ghastly they were in Alexandria and relieved that they weren't worse.  As Rand Paul said, without the D.C. police, it would have been a massacre.  

As it stands, things remain on edge, and I haven't any updates this morning on those who were listed as critical.  (One reporter referred to it as "grave," but that's actually a very different condition, and the hospital hasn't itself used that description.)  My best wishes go not only to those injured, but the doctors as well.

This isn't about "hopes and prayers." (tm)  If you really want to pray, the time to have started was well-before the shooting that there not be anymore.  After all, you -- and we all -- have had lots of time to get a jump on this with prayers what will all the mass shooting this past year alone, let alone for years and decades before, let alone political shootings.

I understand prayers.  What I don't understand is relying on prayers alone.  Always relying on God fixing the problem after the fact time-after-time-after-time-after....  And not just "the" problem, but our problem.  After all, isn't this the Era of Personal Responsibility?

While praying, let's also be grateful for science and medical training, without which most shooting victims who are still alive have a chance.  Though it's fine to pray that science and medical training be allowed to grow and flourish.

Besides which, if we're always told, "Everything Happens For a Reason," and "It's God's Will," why not just fall back on this shooting in Virginia happened for a reason and it is God's will?  Personally, I don't think that's the case at all.  I think this was a man's doing, and there are thinks we here on earth can do about it, beyond just praying.

And I must note that when I wrote "shootings" at the opening, I wasn't just referring to all those fired on at the baseball practice, but the four people killed in San Francisco yesterday at the UPS center.  It didn't get nearly as much attention at the mass shooting across the country, but it was ghastly and had four dead.

What would be nice if besides merely praying that those who offer only "hopes and prayers" (tm) would also take some personal, human action themselves.  Needless-to-say, though, all we heard from most Republicans who spoke out and were afraid of corporate-owned NRA shadow was a call for just "hopes and prayers" (tm), not a word for dealing with gun safety.  I don't know much about the shootings in San Francisco, but I do know that the shooter in DC owned his guns legally and didn't appear to have a history of mental illness.  (Not that the latter would have made a difference, since the GOP-led Congress passed a bill that made the latter just peachy for those with "severe" mental illness, which means they would be at a level where they couldn't legally be allowed to sign papers for themselves.)  You'd think now that several of their own party have been shot at, Republicans might possibly be more sensitive to working on the problem -- though you probably wouldn't have to think very hard or long about it.

Of course, what would have been nice too is if the president said something comforting or at least pointed about the non-Congressional shootings -- where there were actual deaths of innocent victims.  But we've come to not expect that.

I send my hopes and prayers that next time -- and sadly until action is taken here on earth , there will be a great many next times -- he will be responsive.  And hope and pray, too, that Republicans will be as well so that there aren't nearly as many "next times."