The new norm has become seeing our flag at half-mast.  

Every other week or so has brought a new tragedy that causes us to demonstrate our sadness with respect, by pulling old glory down to mid point on the pole. This simple public community response has become all too common.

It’s one thing to show respect for lives lost needlessly. But it now becomes more the time to say stop, turn and act more with the outrage that has caused the flag to drop yet again.

We can easily point to the NRA, who insists that firearms be part of every American household across the land. They firmly hold up the Second Amendment and shout that it is a constitutional duty to possess vast amounts of ammo with the automatic propellants to fuel the bullets.

They are the source of the problem certainly, supported by the manufacturers of such weapons and the likes, but it’s time to call to count those really responsible who have allowed for the vast proliferation of weapons into the American way of life.

It is the government, the Congress, that is the real and absolute cause to the horrible and ongoing violence that has seized freedom in this country, the simple ability to walk the streets or go to school without impending harm. It is legislative government on national and state levels that has succumbed to the seduction of the money filling the coffers of the politicos to do their direct bidding. The puppet politicos perform so well and enable their Boss, the vastly wealthy NRA, to carry out its mission of unchecked, unregulated weapons for all Americans.

This is their distorted view of the American dream, of “a gun in every pot.” This is pimp politics at its most basic level, with the parasitic politicians fulfilling their obligations as willing prostitutes, prodded by the lobbyists sent by their pimp master.

We have a government that divides us by methods of scorn and fear tactics. It has left us deeply hurt no doubt as our trust has vanished. Perhaps our disgust will now cause us to act where it really counts: at the voting booth. The politicos are beyond shame, as they are inebriated by the flow of money. We voters must get rid of them.

Our country has become the most violent place on the planet, with few rivals. It is time to hold the enablers accountable, to remove them once and for all. We must demand new laws and new controls, but also term limits on the legislative level, because that is where the complacency and dependency occurs with the career politicians. If the executive branches are held by such limits, than why not the ones who make the laws, or fail miserably to make the laws, held to such limits?

It is absolutely time to demand, to insist, to scream, that government for the people and by the people not become some forgotten myth or fantasy. Innocent lives are clearly at stake. We owe this to the 17 beautiful innocents so recently tallied to the huge swelling numbers of other victims who have perished as a result of government inactions.

We the people must have the courage to demonstrate and ACT with vast change to the government that has let us down and become the real problem in America.  

America must be reclaimed by its people — all of its people. Let us raise our flag high on the pole once again. Let our tears propel us to remove the politicos who have failed us.

Stephan Brigidi

4 Franklin St., Bristol

Mr. Brigidi is an adjunct professor of aesthetics at Roger Williams University.