This column was originally intended to focus on the exasperating exhibition campaigns of the Atlanta Falcons and Tennessee Titans. It was supposed to lament the fact that it's too bad they aren't scheduled to play each other this preseason, because that might be each team's best chance to get a win before the real season begins.
Then the following words flashed across my computer screen: "Mass shooting at mall hosting Madden 19 tourney."
Surely your first thoughts were the same as mine: Not again.
Oh, please, not again.
Weren't Columbine and Sandy Hook and the Orlando night club enough? Weren't Marshall County, Kentucky; Parkland, Florida; Sante Fe, Texas; and the Waffle House in Nashville more than enough? Weren't the 58 killed last October in Las Vegas and the 32 lost in 2007 at Virginia Tech way, way more than enough to make this country find some way, any way to put an end to this?
But no, here we are again. This time at a football video game tournament at the Jacksonville Landing, a commercial area along the St. John's River in northeastern Florida filled with bars, shops and restaurants. Previously a spot known for good times and good memories.
Now, each time it's mentioned, someone is sure to remember Sunday. Certain to remember three dead, including the shooter, and 11 wounded. Guaranteed to remember another senseless mass murder in a country that has witnessed far too many of them.
Nor do we seem to be making anything better. Since the start of 2018, we've had at least 14 mass murders in which four or more people were killed, including the 17 students and teachers killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and 10 murdered in Santa Fe. Throw in those killed in Las Vegas last October and the 26 killed (including an unborn child) last November in a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, and the death toll in those 17 incidents alone hits 169 over the past 10 months. That doesn't even include the two young people murdered at Marshall County High School last January, nor does it factor in Sunday's shooting.
All are unique. In most cases, they seem to be carried out by a lone deeply disturbed individual. But there have almost always been warning signs concerning these folks, sometimes multiple warning signs reported by multiple people, yet somehow ignored by the person or law enforcement agency best equipped to help this person avoid a horrific end.
So what happened this time?
According to someone who spoke to the Los Angeles Times, the shooter was a competitor in the gaming tournament who had been knocked out of the event and sought revenge. While that was not immediately confirmed by law enforcement, The Associated Press reported the shooter committed suicide before he could be arrested.
Whatever the reason, this has to stop. We need a national data bank that requires all counselors, psychiatrists, psychologists and law enforcement officials to not only log a notation by the name of anyone displaying remotely violent or emotionally unstable tendencies, but also to bar that person from being allowed to legally purchase a gun. Beyond that, should a shop later be found to have sold that person a gun after such data was posted, the owner of that shop - or at least the person selling the gun - should be charged with the same crime as the person who committed it.
It won't stop every murder in this country. But it will stop some of them, and probably more than a few of the kind that haunt Sandy Hook and Parkland and Sutherland Springs and Columbine to this day.
We may never know the exact reason for Jacksonville. Maybe this person snapped over losing a video game, and maybe it was something deeper. Maybe it could have been stopped with tighter security or earlier detection. Maybe not. All that will have to be sorted out later and possibly added to the list of things we must do better.
But for today, with the audio of all those shots being fired and all those screams of fear and shock still ringing in our ears, the Sunday words of former U.S. House Rep. Gabrielle Giffords - a victim of gun violence during a mass shooting that killed six in Tucson, Arizona in 2011 - bear repeating.
"The massacre in Jacksonville is a tragic reminder of the threats we face from gun violence, no matter who we are or where our day takes us," she said. "And it's yet another devastating indictment of this country's inability to keep our kids safe."
Or anyone else, for that matter.
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @TFPWeeds.