Week in review: What to do about guns? + more Manatee commission drama + homelessness rises in Manatee + newest high school growing + COVID level drops

Good morning!

There’s more homelessness in Manatee County, more kids at Parrish Community High School and more drama at a Manatee County Commission meeting.

And the average price for a gallon of regular unleaded gas in Bradenton-Sarasota has hit another record high — $4.835.

On the bright side, none of that is as scary as what I hope many of us watched last night on television.

But first this.

The challenges to Americans’ freedom, and to our lives, are many.

The threat that women are about to be stripped of a long-established constitutional right.

The threat of a coup to overturn the results of an election.

The threat of rising gun violence.

The fear can be overwhelming to the point of paralysis.

But we’re still a democracy — at least for now — so for each challenge, whatever your cause, we still have the opportunity to act, to be heard, to do our part to control our destiny, and that of the nation.

That optimism — or better said, that faith in our democracy — will be on display in downtown Bradenton on Saturday when people gather in response to recent massacres in Buffalo, Uvalde, Tulsa and elsewhere to protest the carnage and to again demand change to lessen the chance of future tragedies.