In the years that I have been writing this column, I’ve avoided being overly emotional or opinionated about any particular topic.

Not this time, not after still another American tragedy, the recent senseless murders of three children and three school employees by a shooter police say was armed with two “assault-style” guns and a 9 mm handgun in Nashville, Tennessee.

Let me first declare that I am a gun owner. That said, I’m sick and tired that every time these horrific events occur, gun advocates stand upon the pulpit preaching the gospel about their Constitutional rights.

The Second Amendment guarantees citizens the right to bear arms. It does not distinguish a handgun from a high-powered rifle. One in 20 American adults owns an AR-15. Gun experts argue this rifle is not technically an assault weapon. Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines an assault as “a violent physical attack.” What happened in Nashville was just that.

I’m sick and tired of hearing the same old battle cry - guns don’t kill people; people kill people. We know that no gun fires itself. We also know that a mentally unstable person with a high-powered weapon that can fire 45 rounds a minute is a deadly combination. When the triggers are pulled on these rifles, targeted victims in close quarters have little chance to escape the death toll. We make it far too easy for them to obtain these weapons at a gun store. In America, the hard truth is that profit matters more than people.

It’s easy for gun advocates to defend the right to own this weapon because it wasn’t their child who lay dead under her desk and didn’t come home from school. It wasn’t their mother who was left to die in a pool of blood on the floor of a church. It wasn’t their husband who walked out of a store in a mall with a gift for his wife only to get gunned down by a hail of bullets from an AR-15.

When asked why anyone would need this rifle, one man told me, “You have to be ready to protect yourself if China or Russia invades our country.” In a CNBC report, one woman said, “I go to bed comfortably because I have an AR-15 beside my bed.”

Paranoia has replaced common sense.

I’m sick and tired of those who say, “If we ban the legal sale of these weapons, the killers will buy them on the streets anyway.”

We must make AR-15s illegal because they continue to be sold in retail stores to people who kill or their parents, including the weapons purchased by the Nashville shooter.

In America we ban books, but we don’t ban these weapons.

Let us not point to this president or the past president for failing to ban these rifles. Let’s point to both presidents for not taking necessary steps to make them illegal in every state and then back the ban with jail sentences should anyone have possession of AR-15s. Instead of taking effective action, Washington continues to send thoughts and prayers and lower the flag to half-staff.

This was not a political issue in Nashville. This took the life of Evelyn Dieckhaus, William Kinney and Hallie Scruggs, the three 9-year-olds shot dead at the school. This was the life of substitute teacher Cynthia Peak. This took the life of the head of the Covenant school, Katherine Koonce and the life of custodian Mike Hill. He was a father of seven children and a grandfather of 14.

According to Kiara Alfonseca from ABC news, there have been at least 128 mass shootings in America this year, more than there have been days on the calendar and 38 in March alone. In 2022, 647 mass shootings occurred in the USA.

These are astounding numbers for a country that was once considered to be the best and safest place to live in the world. We are no more. We are a rising population of angry people, isolated, alienated, living desperate lives without purpose, without compassion, without empathy - and with weapons that kill.

I’m sick and tired of discovering that after many of these horrific events, people come forward and say they had known the perpetrator was up to something. In some instances, the killer drew a picture or told a classmate the plan or broadcast intention on social media. Withholding information that might have prevented these tragedies is a crime in of itself.

I was sick to my stomach when I saw a photo taken after the Nashville shooting of a little girl sitting on a parked school bus. She was crying. She had the palm of her hand pushed against the window of the bus. She was afraid. We should all be afraid for her and with her. One might think she was the lucky one who got out alive, but it’s not going to be that simple. She’ll live the rest of her life never being able to unsee what she saw that day. She’ll never be able to unhear what she might have heard - the gunshots, the screams, and the panic of everyone in the school running for safety.

I’m appalled that a company on social media is now selling glass replicas of AR-15s as whiskey decanters and Americans are buying them. Drinking from a model of a weapon that has been used to murder children is unconscionable.

Here’s a stunning reality that should disturb the complacency we have about “just another mass shooting.” Our prisons are safer than our schools, our churches, and our malls. Think about that when we hug our children coming home from school. Think about that when we kiss our loved ones returning from work.

Shame on you, America. You’ve done nothing to stop the madness. Your once proud eagle no longer soars above our country. It has lost its wings and we have lost our minds.

Rich Strack can be reached at richiesadie11@gmail.com