The plague on our house

(In which the Blob ... well, you know. Standard procedure in play.)

The long Fourth of July weekend is behind us now, and here in my town we celebrated America in an unfortunately American way. Which is to say, a bunch of teenagers staged a shootout in the heart of downtown, just like the Old West or at least how we imagine it.

Four kids between the ages of 15 and 18 ate lead, as we say here in the US of A. One of them, a 16-year-old, died.

That's another young person who didn't live through the summer, and who won't show up at school in the fall. Another young person who found out too late that when you play with guns, it ain't like the movies. People die for real, and there are no sequels.

And if you're asking now how the hell juveniles get their hands on so many guns so often, perhaps you have forgotten where you live, all the Fabulous Fourth hoo-ha notwithstanding. This is America, where we regard firearms with the sort of idolatry other nations reserve for religious icons. And where it's ridiculously easy to obtain them, despite the gun owners who claim it's not all that easy if the sellers are following the law and have a healthy respect for the lethality of what they're selling.

But if there are legal hoops through which to jump in those instances, they're comparatively roomy hoops. And the jump isn't much of one if you've got a clean rap sheet and are responsible and mature enough to understand, again, exactly what it is you're buying.

The problem, of course, is there are all kinds of other ways in America to get your hands on a gun, or guns. And those other ways don't care if you're responsible and mature, or just a teenager who wants to play gangsta.

This country is awash in guns, frankly, despite all the alarmist claptrap about Barack or Hillary or Joe Biden comin' to take them away. That is and always has been nothing more than the fever dream of wannabe patriots who seem to feel they're missing out on the total American package if they can't take up arms against tyranny, imagined or otherwise. Those guys who fought the Revolution had all the fun, dammit, and the wannabes want theirs, too.

In any case, another teenager is dead and three more are wounded here in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and downstate in Indy another wee-hours OK Corral extinguished two young lives and damaged another five over the weekend. It's the plague on our American house, bewitched as we are by calibration and the sort of feel-good payback Hollywood feeds us in regular doses.

Faced with that, public officials grasp at straws. In Indianapolis, chief of police Chris Bailey was reduced to impotent rage over the latest  spasm of violence, saying "I'm tired of it" and imploring parents to do some damn parenting.

"This kind of violence downtown or in any of our neighborhoods is completely unacceptable and unnecessary," Bailey said. "Hundreds of unsupervised kids down here ... I don't know how many times I have to say it -- we are not your children's keepers! You are!"

Here in the Fort, meanwhile, Mayor Sharon Tucker, in a more restrained manner, echoed Bailey's sentiments. Said parents and caregivers needed to know where their children were. Said young people needed to be "respectful" of each other. Said "the type of behavior by a few in our community will not be tolerated."

And yet it continues to happen, tolerated or not.

And yet kids keep shooting kids, here and in Indianapolis and pretty much everywhere else.

And this is our nation in 2025, where the gun is king and pretty words, even angry words, seemingly are no match for it.

Forget God bless America, boys and girls. God save America.

From itself.