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This is an opinion column.

Lets just be truthful. Lets look in the mirror and stop pretending. Look in the mirror and stop denying what we see. Look in the mirror and stop lying.

America, we love our guns more than we love our children.

We love our guns more than we love our educators.

We love our guns more than we love feeling safe while grocery shopping, walking through the park, watching a parade, or attending an outdoor concert.

We love our guns more than we love our neighbors.

We love our guns more than we love ourselves.

Theres no lipstick to put on this slaughtered pig. Just truth.

I dont know what else to say or write about guns.

About pleas to tighten access to guns, particularly to ban assault weaponsguns able to spray dozens of bullets at the snap of a synapse, with one squeeze. To tighten gaps in the sponge-like system of background checks. To require guns be stored and locked safely in our homes.

Three more children are dead, all just nine years old. Three more educators, too, all in their young sixties. All now dead.

We dont care. Read it. Say it out loud. Its just truth.

Oh, we feel. We hurt. Our stomachs go weak, our hearts skip when we learn of yet another godawful killing spree. On Monday, a day when many families in the South are celebrating spring break, a 28-year-old woman walked into the Covenant School, a Presbyterian school in an affluent Nashville neighborhood, armed with two assault-style weapons and a handgun.

We dont yet fully know why, only what: Three more children are dead, all just nine years old. Three more educators, too, all in their young sixties. All now dead.

Rachel Dibble, who was at the church where parents gathered to be reunited with their forever-changed children shared: People were involuntarily trembling. The children started their morning in their cute little uniforms, they probably had some Froot Loops and now their whole lives changed today.

We all trembled a little bit today. Involuntarily. Yet we dont care.

The Covenant attack was the 129th mass shooting in 2023, notes the Gun Violence Archive. Its just March.

They make us sick. We dont care.

We dont even care about this truththat the founding father architects of the precious second amendment upon which we fervently stand and declare our unassailable right to bear arms in no way intended for us to bear weapons for the hell of it. And certainly not for self-defense, which gun zealots frothingly claim while blithely skipping, like school children on a playground, right over the amendments opening words: A well-regulated Militia

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Roots of the amendment extended back to England over allowing citizens to bear arms enabled the Crown to wield them as loyalists to combat dissidents. Without cannonballing into a whole history lesson, suffice it to say the royals wanted subjects to have guns so they could defend the royals, not themselves.

Theres plenty of debate about the intentions of words and phrases used by the new Americans in crafting the second amendmentlike does free State refer to separate states defending themselves against other states, or the nation/state defending itself against despotism or an attack from foreign shores?

Yet theres no debating this truth: They in no way intended for us to love guns this much.

So much so our politiciansRepublican politicians; this mirror dont liebelieve youll love them simply because they love guns. Not because of their policies, platforms, or positions to address Americas greatest needs.

Because they love guns. Ivey. Tuberville. Britt. They ran gun-totin campaign ads, as did a bevy of other Alabama Republicans during last years mind-numbing elections.

Vote for us because we love guns, too. More than our children, whom we still struggle to educate; our infants, whom we struggle to keep alive through their first birthday; and our working neighbors who cannot afford quality healthcare because we love being one of only 10 states now not to expand Medicaid. (On Monday, North Carolina Republicans Gov. Roy Cooper, surrounded by supporters from both parties, signed into a law a bill expanding Medicaid to hundreds of thousands of residents in the state.)

You may not know Tennessees Rep. Andy Ogles, who represents the Nashville district where Covenant School resides. Utterly heartbroken is how the Republican lawmaker described his feeling in the wake of the tragedyas a father of three, he wrote in a statement that offered, of course, thoughts and prayers.

By now youve likely seen Ogles 2021 Christmas photoin it, he, his wife, and the two oldest of his three children gleefully wield automatic rifles. The youngest, legally too young perhaps to bear such arms, instead holds a sign reading, Merry Christmas.

God, we love our gunsmore than our lives.

If we didnt, wed actually do something about them. Just truth.

More columns by Roy S. Johnson

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Roy S. Johnson is a Pulitzer Prize finalist for commentary and winner of the Edward R. Murrow prize for podcasts: Unjustifiable, co-hosted with John Archibald. His column appears in AL.com, as well as the Lede. Subscribe to his free weekly newsletter, The Barbershop, here. Reach him at rjohnson@al.com, follow him at twitter.com/roysj, or on Instagram @roysj

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Roy S. Johnson: Face it, America, we love our guns more than our children - AL.com