In the hours following a violent rampage in downtown Charleston in which a lone attacker killed nine individuals and seriously injured one other, citizens living in the only country where this kind of mass killing routinely occurs reportedly concluded Wednesday that there was no way to prevent the massacre from taking place. This was a terrible tragedy, but sometimes these things just happen and theres nothing anyone can do to stop them, said Oklahoma resident Kenneth Barrows, echoing sentiments expressed by tens of millions of individuals who reside in a nation where over half of the worlds deadliest mass shootings have occurred in the past 50 years and whose citizens are 20 times more likely to die of gun violence than those of other developed nations. Its a shame, but what can we do? There really wasnt anything that was going to keep this guy from snapping and killing a lot of people if thats what he really wanted. At press time, residents of the only economically advanced nation in the world where roughly two mass shootings have occurred every month for the past five and a half years were referring to themselves and their situation as helpless. 