We went to church on Sunday shortly after news broke about the shooting in Texas. My wife didn’t want to sit in our usual spot. She said she’d be more comfortable near the fire exit. I wanted to tell her she was overreacting. I wanted to tell her it’s crazy to start planning our escape route every time we go to a public place. I wanted to tell her we’re at church, nobody will hurt us here, we’re safe. But I couldn’t tell her any of that. There have been three mass casualty attacks in the last five weeks. Two church
shootings since September. The deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history was in October. The second deadliest was last year. The fifth deadliest was on Sunday. Something is happening. Something bad. I know the statistics still assure us that we’re almost definitely not going to die in the middle of some coward’s killing spree. We’ll die of something else. Cancer, probably. Or heart disease. But statistics are just numbers. They didn’t protect the people in Texas. Or Las Vegas. Or New York. The Thing That Doesn’t Happen Around Here happened there, to them, and it’s happening more and more to people it was almost definitely not going to happen to. READ MORE
