It's become so commonplace that it barely makes the news anymore. On Monday, an armed and mentally depressed young man went into his former high school and started shooting. When the smoke cleared, a beloved teacher and a 16 year old girl were dead, and others wounded.

With just two weeks until election day, no politician is stepping up and demanding an end to gun violence. The news is so busy covering the candidates, and Kanye West, and Ukraine, that this becomes just another chyron crawl under whatever political nonsense is being breathlessly spewed across the airwaves.

While slavery may be our country's Original Sin, the Cult of the Gun is the ongoing one, put in place to enforce the original one. We are trained from an early age that the "White" hats are the good guys and the "Black" hats are the bad guys, and those "Injuns" are barely human at all. We grew up watching westerns where guns were the answer to protect the white protagonist. It's no wonder that with the shrinking majority of white Americans, they are clinging to their guns and rounding the wagons.

Kids are being indoctrinated to the ubiquitous presence of firearms, and the notion that they are the solution to all man's problems. Never mind that we figured out Mutual Assured Destruction wasn't the outcome anybody wanted in the international arms race, that is the proposal of those who make their money off of firearms.

The message is "fear" and the NRA is marketing the message. Fear of "the other"... fear that the "gun-grabbers" are just one election away... fear that they will be treated the way they treated others.

So in the end, we err on the side of mayhem, and nothing ever changes. We didn't even get the insincere "thoughts and prayers" this time. It's like no one is even bothering to pretend anymore.

Praise the lord and pass the ammunition