When I was an Owlet, I knew my dad was magic. He could whisk his hand through the air, and voila, in his palm were two tickets to a baseball game! Time passed, and I discovered his magic palms weren’t magic, and even my dad wasn’t immortal. Of course, I remember when we saw games together and how he was always of good cheer when we watched baseball.

We sometimes never grow out of belief in magic. My favorite magicians, Penn and Teller, make it clear that magic tricks are just that, tricks. They aren’t reality and never were: “One of the things that Teller and I are obsessed with, one of the reasons that we’re in magic, is the difference between fantasy and reality,” Penn Jillette says.

Fantasy is where you pretend. We all watch movies and pretend good guys always slaughter baddies with any firepower at hand. A TV series, “The Rifleman,” began each episode with Chuck Conners blasting half dozen Winchester Repeater shots as he moseyed down main street while staring one mean eye straight at the camera. Who was watching where the bullets hit? Connor’s “good guy” bullets always hit the bad guy though, and “saved the day.” His Winchester repeater was a magic wand. Not really, of course. That was fantasy. Now video games, artificial intelligence headsets, and movies whisk you to imaginary gunfire carnivals of painlessly dead people. You, too, can walk behind a pretend gun and massacre people right and left, firing buckets of rounds.

Or you can do it in real life. I suppose no one needs another essay about mass murder. Mass murder is America now. New day, new body count. Only real. Some politicians say there’s nothing they can do about it. Some gun salesmen don’t want politicians — or you — to do anything about it. Self-identified patriots discovered our Constitution’s 2nd Amendment. They claim that the authors of our Constitution, in the age of muskets, foresaw allowing concealed carry private ownership of semi-automatic weapons. Ain’t America wonderful? The least political effort to keep such weapons from dangerous, disturbed, or criminal purchasers is fought ferociously by all the above. They imagine any such law as a first step to taking their guns away. Fantasy. To protect their fantasy, they’d allow almost daily, real, cold-blooded murders. Seems the easy gun access crowd doesn’t really trust trained, professional police to do their job to serve and protect. Even preachers don’t see “weapons as salvation” worship as a sort of blasphemy. No, they don’t see it even when their own people in the pews see weapons as a sort of magic wand for safety. “In guns we trust.”

One Owl’s dad I spoke to was in the Army. If you owned a private weapon in the barracks, it had to be locked up in the unit armory. Soldiers were particularly cognizant of the slaughter power they possessed “for work.” To be a shooter in the military meant you had to be trained and have a background check to use a mass casualty producing weapon. Now, many states say the average Joe civilian can buy a high-powered weapon without safety training, background checks, licensing or even a requirement to keep his unloaded weapon locked in a safe at home. No red flag laws, no immediate notification of crimes to a central, checkable database, nothing is required in some states, so your right to treat a weapon like a toy is protected. And hey, carry it wherever you want without a permit. While you’re at it, leave your loaded gun around the house. Little kids explore. Some find loaded guns and shoot their little brothers or even themselves at home. Born in the USA.

More little kids going to school, more innocent average people just trying to get through another day are shot dead by a mass shooter. Fill in the city or town, the responses are always the same. Shock, wonder. “This was always such a quiet neighborhood.”

We all expect another American massacre, and we’ll continue to do what we’ve always done. Nothing — or next to nothing — to stop it. When another angry shooter gets easy access to a rapid-fire weapon, or many, with huge magazines and bump stocks, he’ll come killing.

I guess only when it happens to someone you personally love you’ll wish the shooter’s guns were locked away. You’ll wish he’d been earlier identified as dangerous, or maybe even that such weapons weren’t available to begin with. You’ll pray and wonder why, looking at your dead child or grandchild, why no one tries to stop this. Why no red flag laws? You’ll remain stunned at the squadrons of politicians, their lawyers, their donors, and gun salesmen who maintain America’s weapons industry, who, hand over heart, profess their love of the Constitution. Perhaps they can quote the appropriate Constitutional passage at your child’s graveside.

Until the day it happens to you, you can remain like the appeasers of Hitler. Appeasers didn’t care enough, or were afraid to stop Hitler before he committed his crimes. Winston Churchill said, “An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile — hoping it will eat him last.” Don’t be an appeaser. Do something to really protect your children, your children’s children. That’s reality. There’s no magic wand.