American carnage
By 
Today’s mass murder at a supermarket in Boulder took place across the street from the apartment where I lived for the first three years after I moved to this city. I would walk to it several times per week to shop, and I would start my daily run from its parking lot up to the National Center for Atmospheric Research, which sits at the top of the mesa a couple of miles up the road.
This weekend a friend of my son’s had told him about the great new playground at Bear Creek Elementary, which is halfway between the supermarket and NCAR. I had promised him we would go there this afternoon, but when we tried to drive there the way was blocked by hundreds of emergency vehicles (I hadn’t yet heard about the incident).
He asked what was happening, and I told him that something must be broken, which I suppose ended up being as close to the truth as he ought to know at his age.
Mass shootings in American public places resulting in eight or more fatalities, by decade:
1950s: 0
1960s: 1
1970s: 0
1980s: 6
1990s: 6
2000s: 7
2010-2021: 21