Which Families Will Grieve Tomorrow?

Two veterans, two states, two massacres in one weekend. America’s obsession with guns has turned our neighborhoods into war zones. The only question left: whose community is next?

Guest article by Michael Cohen. Follow him on Substack for more by clicking here.

Photo by Chip Vincent on Unsplash

If I said America might have a gun problem, would you not look at me and say, no shit, Sherlock? But here’s the question that keeps me up at night: if we all know it, if it’s so obvious, then why in God’s name is nothing being done? Why do we keep pretending that every weekend’s massacre is just another “isolated incident”? Why do we act like our grief resets the clock, wipes the slate, and allows us to stumble forward until the next bloodbath?

Just this past weekend, two more communities were ripped apart: one in Michigan, one in North Carolina. Two Marine veterans—two men who once wore the uniform of this country—turned their training, their discipline, their weapons into tools of destruction against their neighbors.

In Grand Blanc Township, Michigan, a 40-year-old Marine veteran named Thomas Jacob Sanford drove his car straight into a chapel of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He didn’t stop there; he pulled out an assault rifle, opened fire, and then set the building ablaze. Four dead. Eight wounded. Families forever shattered. A house of worship turned into a war zone.

Sanford’s story, on paper, reads like that of so many veterans. He joined the Marine Corps in 2004. Served in Iraq. Decorated. Rose to sergeant. Came home with medals but also—let’s be honest—came home from a war that never really ended for him. He left the Corps in 2008. By 2025, he was driving his vehicle into a church and gunning down people at prayer.

And before the smoke cleared in Michigan, across the country in North Carolina, another veteran, Nigel Edge, pulled his boat up to a bar in Southport and opened fire on people just out enjoying the weekend. Three killed. Eight wounded. He, too, had worn the uniform, received the Purple Heart, survived his own wounds. Yet here he was, wounding others in a “highly premeditated” attack.

Authorities said there’s “no further credible threat to the public.” But how hollow does that sound when families are planning funerals, when a community’s sense of safety has already been burned to the ground? The bullets may have stopped flying, but the damage is permanent. The threat doesn’t vanish just because the shooter is in custody or killed; it lingers in every parent’s hesitation to let their child out the door, in every worshipper’s side glance at the back of the church, in every stranger’s nervous silence at a bar. The truth is, the threat has already woven itself into the fabric of our daily lives.

Two states. Two massacres. One weekend. Both at the hands of men who once raised their right hand and swore an oath to protect this nation.

You can’t ignore the pattern. You can’t keep shrugging and saying, “Well, that’s tragic.” Tragic doesn’t even scratch the surface. Predictable is the word that fits. America has a gun problem so deep, so corrosive, so undeniable that it infects every corner of our society—even those who once carried arms on behalf of the nation.

Let me say something blunt: it’s too easy to blame these two men entirely, as though they were just bad apples with emotional problems. But that’s the cop-out America loves. The truth is, we built this. We stacked the kindling, poured the accelerant, and handed them the match. We live in a country where guns outnumber people. Where AR-15s are marketed like sneakers. Where politicians talk about “Second Amendment solutions” as if that isn’t a wink and a nod toward violence.

If you think it’s coincidence that two Marine veterans carried out mass shootings within 24 hours of each other, you’re not paying attention. We send young men and women into war, we train them to kill, we decorate them for valor—and then we abandon them when they come home. We leave them to fight the demons of PTSD, of rage, of alienation, armed with the same assault-style weapons we pretend are tools for “self-defense.”

And here’s the kicker: our leaders, the ones who could actually do something about this, stand frozen. Or worse, they stand complicit. The NRA, the gun lobby, the cowardly members of Congress—they know full well that blood is spilling every single day. But they hide behind bullshit slogans like “thoughts and prayers” or “guns don’t kill people.” Tell that to the families in Southport. Tell that to the parents who lost their children in Grand Blanc.

As of today, there have been at least 324 mass shootings this year. Three hundred and twenty-four. And we’re not even done with September. This isn’t a “gun problem.” It’s a national sickness. It’s an addiction to violence that we dress up in patriotism and call “freedom.”

We don’t need another headline screaming “mass shooting.” We don’t need another press conference telling us “now is not the time” to talk about gun reform. We need honesty. We need courage. We need leaders willing to put lives above lobbyists and families above firearms. Until then, every weekend will become a lottery of survival—where the only real question is whose town, whose church, whose bar, whose children will be next.

Because make no mistake: if nothing changes, then this past weekend was not an exception. It was a preview.

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