We took a day off from blogging yesterday. It didn’t (still doesn’t) seem appropriate to rattle on about our travels after the shooting rampage at UC Santa Barbara. As you may know, Ben is a grad student there. We learned about the shooting early yesterday morning when Ben texted to let us know he was okay.

We don’t know where all of you stand on the issue of gun control. We are of the belief that there is no place for these types of weapons – the semiautomatic handguns, the assault rifles – in a civilized society. But we also have little hope that anything will be done. Santa Barbara is just another in a long list of tragedies that will be talked about – and then ignored by politicians who are beholden to or afraid of the NRA. If the massacre of 20 kindergarten children (and 6 adults) didn’t bring about meaningful reforms, it’s highly unlikely that the deaths of these young people will even register with lawmakers.

We have some opinions about what steps should be taken – including possibly adding language to the Second Amendment AND the First Amendment, to overrule Citizens United. But we realize these are pipe dreams because we can’t even get democratic senators to agree that universal background checks and magazine limits are reasonable.

Shame on our country for not protecting our most valuable resource, our youth…