Astros manager on Texas high school shooting: Thoughts and prayers aren't fixing problem

In the wake of another deadly school shooting Friday in southeastern Texas, Houston Astros manager A.J. Hinch said we must figure out a way to "stop this madness," stressing that thoughts and prayers aren't sufficient to combat the scourge of gun violence in American schools.

"I don't have the words," Hinch told reporters, including Lainie Fritz of KPRC2. "I mean, I'm here in front of a bunch of cameras trying to make people feel better when I don't think that the situation should ever happen. There's no reason for our schools to be combat zones. And it's turning that way.

"We started the season with a conversation like this in Florida (following the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School), and now we're talking about it in our own city. And it's going to be a different city, and then another city, and then another city. Thoughts and prayers are great; they're not fixing the problem. And until we fix the problem, whether it's guns, whether it's safety, security - I want answers; I don't want to offer any more condolences. I want to find answers."

On Friday morning, a teenager armed with a shotgun and a revolver went on a rampage at Sante Fe High School, about 36 miles outside of Houston, killing 10 people and wounding another 10, confirmed Texas governor Greg Abbott.

According to CNN, the United States has already endured 22 school shootings in 2018 in which at least one person was injured or killed, an average of more than one per week.

"As many times as this seems to happen, I don't think it ever gets less tragic," Astros right-hander Lance McCullers told Mark Berman of FOX 26 Houston. "I just feel like there's got to be some sort of solution."