Today I was so consumed with my company’s all-day volunteer project that I didn’t have a chance to watch the news. But I heard NPR on the way home, and my heart was aching.

How many more mass shootings will it take before this country wakes up and enacts stricter gun-control legislation?!! How many more innocent people need to die before we wake up???

I just don’t get it. Fire arms don’t belong in anyone’s hands … I don’t care how they were obtained — legally or otherwise. Why does anyone (save for law enforcement) need a weapon, period?!

Of course, those in the pro-gun lobby will say the Constitution allows us the right to bear arms. I say let’s just amend the damn Constitution. The suspect LEGALLY had obtained four weapons …

We’ve had so many mass shootings in the past decade alone … and it breaks my heart to think of how many people have senselessly lost their lives. People of all ages and races.

And I don’t know about you, but I’m sickened seeing the suspect’s face over and over on TV. Like so many other suspected (and convicted) mass shooters, he has a sick smile that just disturbs me to no end. It also brings back bad memories for me, from when I sat on a murder trial last fall. I still can’t erase the face of the defendant from my face now, nearly a year later. The way he sat there in the court room each day, not saying a word … yet his expressions said it all.

The title of this blog is Let There Be Light … I want to see the light, the good in humanity. But days like this it’s hard. Today’s shooting was particularly ironic because I’d just been feeling super rosy after our day-long service project, good about the work we were doing … only to find out about the evils of humanity in Colorado earlier in the day.

So tonight I will go to bed with a heavy heart, like so many Americans, praying for those whose lives have been cut short and for their families who are left behind. I’ll also be praying for the injured victims and other witnesses to the massacre. I can’t even begin to imagine the psychological damage they are up against.