Here We Are Again

It never stops, does it?

A mass shooting at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon on Thursday morning has left 13 dead, according to Oregon's attorney general. 

Sheriff John Hanlin at a press conference said he would not confirm the death toll, saying only that there were multiple fatalities and multiple casualties. At 10:38 a.m. local time, police received a 911 call of a shooter in a classroom.

Hanlin said officers exchanged gunfire with the shooter and he was neutralized. The shooter is deceased and has not been identified publicly. Oregon Governor Kate Brown said the shooter is 20 years old.

Spare us the ephemeral outrage.  Spare us the 36 hours of concerned media coverage.  Spare us the smarmy words from the unspeakably evil enablers at the N.R.A., their bag men in Congress, and every right-wing creep.

We have a sick political system in this country, and these are its casualties.

UPDATE:  Here's some of what is known about the shooter:

A posting on the Spiritual Passions dating and social networking site uses a picture that appears to be [Chris Harper] Mercer under the user name IRONCROSS45, which Mercer also used as his email.

He described himself on the site as a 26-year-old, mixed-race “man looking for a woman”. He said he was “not religious, but spiritual”, and was a “teetotaler” living with his parents and a conservative Republican. Socially, he said, he was “shy at first” and “better in small groups”.

We hadn't seen anything in the "mainstream media" about his political leanings and probably never will.