By Michael Meade

When an 18-year-old shooter stormed into a classroom at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas and opened fire, he enacted a horrifying, yet sorrowfully predictable trend. In America, the tragic ritual of mass shootings and gun deaths keeps accelerating.

Ever deeper darkness is being shot from the barrels of automatic weapons that are all too available. Ever greater tragedies are being enabled by the willful blindness and greed of those who benefit from gun violence and gun sales. And ever greater danger surrounds the innocent lives of children having to grow into a culture and climate that devalues life and invites death.

America is killing itself and children are in the crosshairs as the future of life is literally and figuratively in greater danger. America is killing itself as gun deaths become the leading cause of death for children and young people. America is killing itself as many come to believe that their fears, their resentments and their rights are all the same thing. There is no “absolute right” to carry a weapon; yet children should have an absolute right to live and grow and learn about life.

America is killing itself as there are now many more guns than people and many more deadly instances in which the guns are turned on students, fellow workers, shoppers, church goers and innocent children just learning about the world around them.

Weapons of destruction are intentionally being marketed to young people as we witness in horror young shooters who carry AR-15 style weapons follow the scripts of mass shooters who came before them. The deadly accuracy of the weapons and high magazine capacity make them capable of killing people and children quickly, efficiently, coldly.

America is killing itself as gun sales soar after each mass shooting and politicians claim to see no connection between the marketing of weapons of mass destruction and the steady rise in deadly mass shootings. They also have their scripts to follow as those who publicly demonstrate the hardening of their own hearts insist on the hardening of schools.

America is killing itself as gun manufacturers, the NRA and heartless politicians collude in the marketing of weapons only intended for mass death. And sadly, the Republican Party keeps looking everywhere else but at its own role in the carnage. Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) told reporters on the day of the shooting that policies to restrict guns were off the table. “That doesn’t work. It’s not effective. It doesn’t prevent crime,” he said.

Governor Abbott (R-Texas), who has publicly called for Texans to buy the most guns of any state, insisted that government should focus less on age restrictions or access to weapons than on addressing mental health problems before people who turn to violence. “Anybody who shoots somebody else has a mental health challenge, period,” Abbott said. It could also be said that anyone who aids in the distribution of automatic weapons that massacre innocent children, has a mental health problem, period.

The increasing number of mass shootings cannot be reduced to the mental health problems of a few unbalanced individuals. Rather, there is a growing problem with the mental health and psychological issues of political leaders and elected officials. Public figures who demonize others and use the language of threat and violence secretly give permission to unbalanced people to actually act out extreme feelings. Citizens are not only being armed for battle, they are being actively encouraged to wage their own wars on whomever they decide to accuse or blame for their personal grievances.

When public figures, including members of congress and the senate, speak with bravado about owning and being willing to use assault weapons they are not just indicating how fearful they are, how deadly foolish they are; they are also demonstrating a dangerous lack of psychological maturity. And a culture that develops wealth and power but does not develop psychologically must suffer more from self-inflicted wounds than from attacks from outside enemies.

Those who claim to be conservatives, yet also argue for the wide distribution and use of automatic weapons, have forgotten that conserving life is the first responsibility of adult citizens and that preserving the peace is a necessity for sustaining genuine freedom.

An essential sign of maturity is an ability to hold the tension of opposing ideas and conflicting emotions. America itself is still a young country that needs to survive its own immaturities and its own fears. When it comes to handling power, when it comes to learning to truly grieve over loss, when it comes to valuing the sacredness of each life, America, on this Memorial Day, is on a steep learning curve.

Part of the danger of this moment is that reckless ideas like more guns for more people can only increase the current ritual of blind sacrifice. What becomes repeatedly sacrificed is the innocence of children, the trust of fellow citizens and the heart and soul of a culture. We are already in a condition of overwhelming loss that affects each of our souls. And tragedies that do not lead to an increase of wisdom, understanding and compassion can only become greater tragedies.