I don’t know if we are living in a period of more or less violence than the times before or what will happen in the future.  I do know that we are living in a country (if you are in the United States, any way) where approximately 2.6 people are killed each day by the police.  In tennis, we are currently in the “Open Era.”  In life, we should refer to this as the “Mass Shooting Era.”

According to the Washington Post, during the first 204 days of 2015, we have averaged one mass shooting a day.  Let that sink in.  One. Goddam. Mass. Shooting. A. Day.  Seriously, if I were a leader of ISIS, I wouldn’t worry about killing Americans on American soil, I’d stop planning that and remind my followers, “We don’t need to kill Americans, they’re killing themselves.”  If this were a biological model, I would say Americans have exceeded their carrying capacity.

Yet, gun control remains the holy grail of progressive politics.  President Obama has said that not getting anything done for this is the biggest failure of his presidency. Today, I heard part of a heated debate on having guns in movie theatres where the gun rights supporter said things like, “you know you can fire guns in the dark.”  Wow, thanks, Captain Obvious.  His point was, I think, that we should allow everyone to have guns in movie theatres because then a fellow citizen cold have taken the gunman out.  This led to the conversation about what about cops who aren’t in uniform or what if the police burst in just as someone in regular clothes went to “take out” the gunman and didn’t know who the bad guy was. My head went to some movie about the wild west where everyone had guns and the whole place got shot up.

That’s the America I want to live in.  It’s Rick Perry’s America, too.  What is wrong with us?

Some people have said they are concerned about going to the movies now.  What happens when people stop going to other businesses?  When the DC sniper was active, it shut most of the area down.  People cancelled plans to visit the area.  And that was two people in a car, shooting random people at gas stations and outside malls.  The area economy took a huge hit.

When will mass shootings do the same thing?  When will people stop spending money at stores?  When will businesses tell the NRA, “Look, we appreciate your views stem from an opinion of gun rights that was formed when the army used muskets but we’re losing business because modern people are scared of being killed by a crazy person with an assault weapon.  So please stop opposing reasonable measures to prevent mass shootings.”

When will that exchange occur?