Good morning.

It is Wednesday, May 25th, and we are here together to talk about, of course, the number

one new story across the nation, which is the school shooting at Rob Elementary in

U of Aldi, Texas. As of this morning, the reporting is that 19 children between the

grades of second and fourth grade were killed as well as two teachers and the government,

an 18-year-old who was from the community and attended a nearby high school.

So here we are again, 10 years after Sandy Hook with the mass slaughter of little kids,

little kids just going to school. Their school is supposed to go out on Thursday tomorrow,

which is when my school also ends for the year. It's just, it's impossibly hard and it feels

both tragic and predictable and like a seemingly intractable position we put ourselves in

as a country. What are you thinking about this morning, Beth?

Feels predictable both in the collective and the specific sense. He bought two assault

weapons on his 18th birthday and had posted on social media that an attack could be coming.

And so part of what I'm thinking about this morning is why we continue to have mass shooting

events where there were signs that should not have surprises in this specific as well

as in a general. And how do we develop systems where help feels like help instead of feeling

like punishment that keeps people from reporting and that keeps those systems from working

the way that they're designed to work? I'm thinking about how it can be that you can

buy two assault weapons on your 18th birthday. I'm thinking about the way that my kids reacted

as we talked about this. You know, Ellen cried and cried and said, mommy, there's just

there's so much murder in this story. I don't know how to handle so much murder. And it's

just it's too much again. I mean, the fact that we were doing this a week ago. I don't

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