at a loss

I don't know what it is like to live in any other time than this one, where the news feels so awfully close, and is full of terrible things. I feel helpless in the face of it.

The shooting yesterday has me at a loss. There are truly intractable problems in the world, sorrows we can't prevent — but taking guns away, making guns a harder to get, limiting the types of guns we manufacture for general use — that seems frustratingly achievable. To continue callously encourage the conditions that make useless tragedies inevitable — I can't understand it. 355 mass shootings in 336 days. Guns on the grounds of elementary schools. This is the world we have made for ourselves.