Welcome once again to Fandango’s Provocative Question. Each week I will pose what I think is a provocative question for your consideration.

By provocative, I don’t mean a question that will cause annoyance or anger. Nor do I mean a question intended to arouse sexual desire or interest.

What I do mean is a question that is likely to get you to think, to be creative, and to provoke a response. Hopefully a positive response.

It happened again. Yesterday, another mass shooting in the United States occurred just ten days after ten people were shot and killed in a supermarket in Buffalo. As of when I’m writing this, 18 students and a teacher were killed in a mass shooting at a school in the small Texas city of Uvalde. An 18-year-old Uvalde resident entered the school with a handgun and a rifle. Inside the school, according to Texas’ pro-gun governor, Greg Abbott, the teenage gunman “shot and killed — horrifically, incomprehensibly” more than 18 children and a teacher.

The gunman, who legally bought the weapons used in the attack shortly after his 18th birthday on May 16, was shot and killed by officers responding to the scene. Abbott added, “It is being reported that the subject shot his grandmother right before he went into the school.”

This massacre was the deadliest mass shooting in the United States so far this year. The Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit organization, counted at least 215 such shootings, defined as one in which four or more people were killed or injured, through mid-May. Today is the 145th day of the year, meaning that there has been an average of almost 1.5 mass shootings a day in America this year! Ponder that for a moment.

I am so pissed that I can hardly contain my anger and frustration. State governments all across the nation are passing laws making it easier for people to get guns, allowing both open carry and concealed carry. They are liberalizing or eliminating background checks. Gun sales in the United States are at an all-time high. Gun deaths are soaring. And our elected officials — particularly the Republicans — are sitting around with their thumbs up their asses offering their thoughts and prayer.

President Biden spoke about this heinous mass shooting in Texas, saying…

“As a nation we have to ask: When in God’s name are we going to stand up to the gun lobby? How many scores of little children, who witnessed what happened, must see their friends die as if they’re in a battlefield?

I am sick and tired of it. We have to act. And don’t tell me we can’t have an impact on this carnage. For God’s sake, we have to have the courage to stand up to the industry.”

My provocative question this week is similar to what I asked last week after the Buffalo mass killings. I am looking for your reactions and thoughts about this kind of gun violence that is endemic in the United States.

Do you feel that President Biden’s plea to take action and to do something to stem the rising tide of gun violence in America have any impact? Or will lawmakers at both the federal and state levels do nothing more than offer their useless “thoughts and prayers,” which is all they ever do?

If you choose to participate, write a post with your response to the question. Once you are done, tag your post with #FPQ and create a pingback to this post if you are on WordPress. Or you can simply include a link to your post in the comments. But remember to check to confirm that your pingback or your link shows up in the comments.