It happened yet again, as it does every week: Another mass shooting, this one at a Parkland, Florida, high school.

Multiple deaths were reported Wednesday as gunfire broke out at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, with a suspect in custody. […]

There were 14 victims, according to the Broward Sheriff’s Office. The agency did not say how many were fatalities.

This one was different from the others in that it was broadcast live on news channels; before the suspect was even apprehended, news helicopters were circling the school and cable television anchors were showing images shared by students still in hiding inside the classrooms. This grotesque live display of the ongoing panic led to the rote pronouncements of thoughts and prayers even as armed officers were still hunting for a suspect.

The suspect, who has been detained, is a 19-year-old former student from the school who reportedly was previously known to the school for threatening students and who, according to a student, “had guns at home and talked about using them.”

But this is, after all, the whole point of the NRA campaign to normalize mass murders; at some point, announce the NRA talking heads in public speeches and in their literature and on their video programs, you may find it “necessary” to murder some of your fellow Americans, after they have wronged you in some manner, and the government must allow you the weapons you desire in order to perhaps someday do that. This happens in no other advanced nation because no other such nation is held captive by lobbyists paid to defend the “necessity” of acts of domestic terrorism.

The White House cancelled today’s press conference, after multiple delays, so that it would not overlap with coverage of this latest mass shooting.

Wednesday, Feb 14, 2018 · 11:15:59 PM +00:00 · Hunter

ABC and CNN are reporting 15 or 16 dead, according to unnamed “law enforcement” sources.

Wednesday, Feb 14, 2018 · 11:45:22 PM +00:00 · Hunter

The Broward County Sheriff now reports 17 dead.