“The only response to a child’s grave is to lie down before it and play dead.”
– Bill Knott, poet.
[This commentary has elicited more responses than anything previously published on the site. I’ll leave it up over the weekend to accommodate final thoughts and summations. RA]
The shooting rampage in Connecticut makes any other topic seem trivial at the moment. When America gets back to business on Monday it will be with a heavy heart and the bewildering feeling that we are powerless to do anything about such violence, now or in the future. Those who advocate gun control undoubtedly believe their cause is just. But they might as well be talking about banning automobiles to save what remains of the world’s coral reefs and glaciers. For even if it could be done, and even if carbon emissions were the undisputed cause of the problem, it is already too late. Better to adapt than to tilt at windmills. To suggest that gun control is the cure for rampages like the one that occurred on Friday is to avoid confronting the real problem: civilization itself is mentally ill. And for that, there are no easy cures — certainly not outlawing certain types of weapons.
Could it get any worse than the mass murder of twenty first-graders? Unfortunately, and tragically for humanity, it conceivably could. We shudder to imagine what horrific event will eventually overshadow the unspeakable carnage that took place at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Twenty children, none older than seven, were murdered where they sat, each shot repeatedly by a high-powered rifle. Six adults were slain by that weapon as well, some of them in the heroic act of shielding the children.
Arm All Adults
Better that all of the adults should have been packing heat. Many of you, perhaps most, will vehemently disagree with this statement. I fully understand and respect your point of view. How could more guns be the answer, right? But just as we cannot realistically deal with climate change by trying to control or reverse it, we cannot deal with crazy gunmen by attempting to recall tens of millions of guns already “out there.” No gun-control law under consideration, even a law that would seek to confiscate virtually every firearm in America, would have prevented Adam Lanza from doing what he did. Nor will even the most draconian gun laws prevent a heavily armed psychopath from surfacing at some point in the future. Scotland has some of the tightest gun control laws in the world, but they didn’t stop a killer from fatally shooting sixteen 5- and 6-year-olds and their teacher in 1996. Nor did Norway’s equally stringent laws prevent Anders Breivik from murdering 69 people, mostly teenagers, on Utoya Island two summers ago. The rifle and two pistols Lanza brought with him to the school reportedly belonged to his mother, but it appears he could have passed a detailed background check himself.
Personally, I have delayed getting a concealed weapon permit for too long. Groupon has a $69 Denver offer, and I’m going to take it, along with 30 hours of range practice. I’ll let my wife and sons decide for themselves whether they want to join me. But an armed citizenry alone cannot hope to prevent the Adam Lanzas and Anders Breviks of the world from succeeding. More than merely being armed, each of us will need to put in long hours at the local range. And it will probably take more than one of us to bring down a homicidal crazy like Lanza, armed as he was with a semiautomatic rifle and trigger-happy unto death. Let us prepare to do so nonetheless, even as we seek a better solution.
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When the ATF and the military of the USA under the Chief, Bill Clinton, attacked citizens and murdered 53 adults ( including 2 pregnant women) and 21 children, it was the second time in Bill Clinton’s presidency that he had attacked and murdered citizens of the USA. http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=a87_1349120025
Months before the attack on these citizens he had attacked and killed a child and a woman at Ruby Ridge. Randy Weaver finally won millions of dollars from the USA citizens, (not Bill Clinton), for the wrongful attack on his property.
And yet the citizens of the USA honor the mass murderer, Bill Clinton.