Conversation on a theme

Take a deep breath.
Slowly blow it out.
Hold it out for a second.
Take another deep breath.

Center your sight and slowly exhale.
When all is still, gently apply pressure to the trigger.
When it's all smooth and all goes well, you never know when the weapon discharges.

"You're low and to the left."
"By how much?"
The voice to my left pauses. "About two millimeters."
I carefully switch the selector to safe and place the rifle on the tabletop.
"I need a few minutes." My spotter doesn't say a word as I lift the bottle of water to my lips and take a sip.
It is only when I'm through, does he dare to inquire. "Did you hear about the mass shooting in Riverside?"
Another one? I take a deep breath and call up the facts. A 19 year old man, a high school full of innocent children. 22 deaths. 22 Useless, senseless deaths. 22 lives snuffed out before realizing their dreams.
"Wasn't he on psych meds?" I seem to recall something like that.
"So they say." The voice next to me whispers. "What do you think?"
I look down to the rifle setting on the tabletop. It is a work of art. It has taken mankind millions of years to develop such a thing of beauty. It has taken a lifetime to get the feel just right, from the way it fits my hand, to smoothness of the buttstock, to the intricate beauty of the sight picture. It had taken years to get rifling down, so that metal cased rounds "spin" when they are discharged.
I know where my buddy is going with this. It's the same thing every time.
"I think that the young man is now a criminal." It's true, he is now a criminal. He has killed 22 people.
My buddy is quiet for a moment. "Where do you think we went wrong?"
We? We aren't the one's who pulled the trigger. "We didn't go wrong. He wasn't our child. He's nineteen. Old enough to join the military or local police and get killed." But not old enough to drink legally, and in some states, not old enough to buy porn magazines or cigarettes.
"Did we let him down?"
We? As in society? "Maybe." I'm not sure. We can't be every where and see every thing.
"What do you think we can do to stop this?"
That is a loaded question. Better help with mental screenings, more involvement by parents, better monitoring of social media, and maybe listening to tips called in weeks in advance. "Short of repealing the second amendment, you mean?"
My friend nodded, somber.
"I'd start by treating a firearm like cigarettes. Raise the age limit to twenty-five." But would that be enough? If modern neuro-science was accurate, the human brain didn't fully develop until you were between twenty-six and thirty years of age. "Other than that? Hire guys like you and me to patrol the schools and protect the kiddies."
I wasn't so sure that I'd want to do anything. I certainly didn't want to have the government collect everyone's weapon. I had watched for forty-eight years as other governments had done that, and started killing their own citizens, or watching helplessly as criminals did it.
I knew one thing for sure. One man with a rifle could stop twenty men from killing his family or other families. I also knew that I didn't trust the government to protect my family, since they couldn't even protect kids in schools.