To live in America is truly amazing

In shops and schools, you’ll find guns ablazing

The U.S. is proud of the 2nd Amendment

But the Founders could hardly have been transcendent.

Could they envision a land with no weapons restriction?

Where guns are now the national addiction?

No, they wrote a precatory clause

Requiring citizens to obey sensible laws.

A “well regulated” militia is what they meant,

Not an AR-15 sold to some malcontent.

The NRA loves military weapons a lot,

You know, the ones that blow holes in tiny tots.

They don’t want gun regulation to be even cursory,

Though those guns kill kids barely out of the nursery.

It’s people who kill, not guns, says the NRA

Guns just allow “people” to have their way.

The military industrial complex of which we were warned

Has, without thought, been utterly scorned. .

And then, at the end of each brutal day,

We hear pundits remind us to hold vigils and pray

To stop the carnage, I would pray (if only I could),

Sadly, so far, prayers do no damn good.

Kathleen Tepper lives in Norwalk.