This nation lost its way in December 2012 after an imbecile went on national TV and said “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”

He said it after 20 children were gunned down in a Connecticut elementary school, along with six adults trying to protect them.

The nation didn’t lose its way because the jackass said what he said. In this country, you’re allowed to say whatever the hell you want.

It lost its way because after he said it, the Congress of the United States didn’t ignore him. The way leaders of a responsible nation should. It refused to pass legislation that would at least attempt to prevent those with warped minds from getting the tools needed to exterminate people.

And then life went on as if nothing happened. As if the deaths of 20 kids  – none of them more than seven years old – didn’t warrant some kind of action by society.

So, to all those who accept that NRA moron’s unbelievably stupid comment, here are my questions:

Did the Christian-hating wacko in Oregon yesterday think he was the good guy with a gun?

Did the Muslim-hating madman in North Carolina in February think he was the good guy with a gun?

Dud the racist dope in a Charleston church in June think he was the good guy with a gun?

Did the psychopath who went to a Lafayette, La., movie theater in July think he was the good guy with a gun?

More than once every day this year, according to The Washington Post’s mass shooting tracker, did someone walk out some door armed to the teeth and say “I’m the good guy with a gun?”

I’m willing to bet they didn’t say “I’m the bad guy with a gun.”

The reason these mass murderers accomplish their goal is that even when you live in the most armed society in the world, you can’t know how, when, where and who some nut job is going to strike. That and the fact that they probably don’t care if they survive it themselves – how many of them, once they’re finished or cornered, turn the gun on themselves?

And if we did what some jackasses propose and allow national concealed carry laws, people can’t physically maintain that kind of vigilance. There would be no sleep. There would be no trust. There would be no joy. We would be looking at each other as if the person in Starbucks or the guy across the street was a potential mass murderer.

It is beyond belief that this country, unlike civilized nations, won’t stop this scourge. In fact, it takes us out of the league of civilized nations and lumps us with societies where violence is as normal as the sunrise.

We can no longer think we’re better than places where people are afraid to walk through their city or village without being knifed or macheted or violently set upon with any available weapon.

Because when we let the deaths of 20 school children pass without mending our ways, we set ourselves up for what happened afterward. When you hold those lives as cheaply as you did by not acting, what’s another ten college students in Oregon?

I am not optimistic that this is the last or even one of the last of these incidents. Not when you have the predictable response from gun-nut apologists that insane people will use whatever it takes to kill people. Not when you have candidates for President of the United States who say these things happen and they’re the price we pay for our freedom.

So we’ve lost our way. Until we set it straight, until we stop trying to be reasonable with the NRA imbeciles and the gun apologists, the people who spit the Second Amendment at you and imply it supersedes the right to live, we will not be right. We will not be great. We will be a society of fear and anger and death far too soon.