Dead to me

the black-robed jurists, those second amendment absolutists

  who have managed within my lifetime to find rights their predecessors

  over centuries never found

  also all the public figures offering sorrowful thoughts and prayers

  over the latest carnage, especially politicians solicitous of the right

  to be armed like warlords

  but these are only dead metaphorically, unlike all the American dead:

  children, teens, adults, the aged killed over a holiday period

  - real deaths both needless and unconscionable