Friday, December 21, 2012

NEWTOWN, CT

     Seven days ago, twenty children went to school.  On that same day, twenty children didn't get the opportunity to go home.  They died where they learned.  They were slaughtered in the place they were supposed to be safest.  Despite heroic efforts by their teachers, twenty children lost their opportunity to be more than the subject of memorials and tributes.  I haven't spoken to a single person, several states and far removed from the Newtown Massacre, who can finish the conversation on this topic.  It sickens all of us.  A week later, we're still asking why.  On our death beds, that question will remain unanswered.
      This is a crime, a tragedy, without motive.  When Adam Lanza decided to turn Sandy Hook into his own disgusting, evil playground, he ruined innocence.  He made every parent of every six year old in the country wonder if home schooling was a safer option.  He stormed into that school and ruined countless numbers of lives.  There isn't a parent of the twenty children who were murdered that will ever be okay.  Every birthday, every Christmas, every single milestone that they were expecting to celebrate will instead be turned into solemn days of prayer and remembrance.
       While I am neither a parent nor a teacher, Lanza's massacre makes me feel sick because I am friends with both.  Every time I pop on facebook, I am greeted by smiling photos of my friends' children.  Almost every time I catch up with an old friend, I'm talking to a school teacher.  It makes me like everyone else who takes the time to read this.  This one, this school shooting, touches everyone's life in one way or another.  We ask why, we wonder what could've been done to prevent it, and we'll scratch our heads forever to figure it out.
       That, or we, as a country, will realize that legally available assault weapons need to be eliminated from our society.  There is no argument that I can accept for those guns.  I'm 100% in favor of responsible gun owners.  I'm 100% in favor of man's right to hunt.  I'm also 100% opposed to allowing man access to weapons that were designed to kill people.  I don't give a damn how pro-gun or old school you are.  I've seen deer killed with a compact car by accident.  I see no reason to need a virtual tommy gun to harvest some venison.  No more is it okay to justify bigger guns because gun owners like how loud they are or how fast they reload.
        While I support the right to defend your home and support the right to hunt for food, I can't turn a blind eye to the over indulgence in guns that our society has accepted.  If there were ever a time for our nation's leaders to look at our gun culture, that time is now.  It was discussed after Columbine and Virginia Tech.  It's imperative now.  Previous school shootings were peer to peer.  There was at least a glimmer of hope that one of those kids could overpower their attacker and stop the assault.  When a twenty year old enters a room full of six year olds with a weapon, they have no chance at survival.  That is, of course, unless their attacker isn't capable of wielding a gun with the ability to fire off round after round at will.
         I hate talking about gun control.  I'd rather discuss religion with an atheist in the first pew at a Catholic church.  However, I'll talk gun control ad nauseum before I ever want to walk by a television again and see that twenty babies looking forward to Christmas had been murdered by a maniac with easy access to a weapon that could bring down a grizzly bear with one good shot. 
         Overly enthusiastic gun owners have often said that guns don't kill people, people kill people.  This is one of the most ignorant statements ever uttered by man.  People pull the trigger, but the weapon does the killing.  Saying that guns don't kill people, but people do, is akin to saying space shuttles don't land on the moon, people do.  Without the space shuttle, astronauts are limited to just how high they can jump.  Without the shuttle, they fall pretty short of their goal.
         We like to blame video games and movies for giving kids bad ideas.  Many of those video games encourage the theft of vehicles, yet we haven't seen a spike in 14 year olds stealing cars.  Blaming video games or movies for the abnormal and indescribable behavior of school shooters is like blaming the lottery for bank robberies.  It doesn't compute.  Adam Lanza never played a game that encouraged the massacre he committed.  Adam Lanza was a reprehensible and violent individual with access to guns that were capable of killing innocent people at an incredibly efficient rate.  It's time to stop scapegoating video games and movies and start looking at the true reason these crimes are capable of being committed.
         The bottom line is that eliminating assault weapons eliminates the number of deaths that can take place in a classroom full of backpacks with Christmas lists inside them.  It's time for our country to stop being so damned stupid.  I don't ever want to read about two classrooms of first graders being methodically murdered.  I don't ever want to feel compelled to comment on something like this again.  It's time for our leaders to take action to prevent this from ever happening again.  It's time to stop finding excuses for things like this, and start eliminating the actual reasons for these tragedies.  I have friends and family whose lives ultimately depend upon the right decisions finally being made.  God bless the families of all of the victims at Sandy Hook, and God willing, we'll find a way to make our nation more responsible so that the next Adam Lanza doesn't have access to weapons that can inflict more damage than can be reasonably prevented.

- To my friends who are teachers, this tragedy makes me think of you every single day.  I hope none of you are ever faced with anything close to this, and I fully respect your committment to our youth.

- To my friends who are parents, I can't imagine what runs through your head when you kiss your kids goodbye for the school day.  I hope we can make some changes that make your children safer.

Thanks for reading.