Which Families Will Grieve Tomorrow?

Michael Cohen

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.

https://www.meidasplus.com/p/which-families-will-grieve-tomorrow