I love my country. There have been many times I have wondered what life would like had I been born to parents in another country. When those questions pop into my head I am truly thankful that I was born in America.
One disturbing thought that is a reasonable and articulate is how we have gone from a country that often carrys the flashlight to other nations to guide them to democracy and freedom, to a country that is an a constant state of reaction. It has not just been in the past four years, it began decades ago in the streets of Birmingham, on a bridge in Selma, and in a motorcade in Dallas. Every reaction has a price. Four young girls killed in a bombing of a church, in a place that one would think our children were safe. Young Civil Rights activists murdered because they wanted one simple thing: the right to vote for all people. JFK's assignation led to our Presidents being shuffled around in dark limousines that allow them to see out but prevents us from seeing in.
The first school shooting, in Heath High School in Paducah, Kentucky in 1997 where three students were killed has been relatively ignored compared to the carnage that happened in Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, Virginia Tech, an Amish school in Pennsylvania and now Newtown Connecticut. After each tragedy the public made noise about tougher gun laws, but after time had passed and communities moved on, nothing of any significance changed.
More recently we have seen a member of Congress shot and innocent bystanders murdered in Arizona. We watched in amazement as Gabby Giffords worked at being a survivor rather than a victim. A shooting rampage in a movie theater in Aurora Colorado saw our voices rise and fall once again. This time, we have twenty small bodies of six and seven year olds and six adults who tried and died while trying to keep children safe. The reaction from the country is still raw. More people than ever want stricter gun control laws. Some are even making the asinine statement that teachers should have guns in the classroom.
In 2009, when a psychiatrist at Fort Hood in Texas opened fire on a military base he managed to kill thirteen people during a mass shooting. It wasn't the military, who had all the guns needed to fight in war that took the shooter down, it was a local policewoman. If a shooting at the most populous military base in this country could not stop a shooter, then why would anyone think a teacher could do it? How many teachers would feel the need to arm their classroom when all they really want is just a safe environment in which to teach? The fact are clear - if have a gun for protection, you better be damn ready to use it or it will be used on you.
You cannot fix everybody. Some people are just broken. They live an invisible life to most people. We collectively look away when we should be looking at them. Dangerous people live in Everywhere, USA. There are some things that cannot be stopped. Once a psychopath decides to go on a killing spree, only then do we cry out for our Government to do something, anything, to stop this from happening again. The sad reality is that you cannot stop them, you can't read their minds, and you can't point them out in a crowd.
The Sandy Hook Elementary school did everything right that they could do to protect their children. Teachers knew what to do and so did students. The school doors were locked. There is no blame game to be played here. You can blame the shooter, but he is dead and he took the answer as to why he did it when he shot himself. His mother, with whom he resided, was his first victim. She cannot answer why.
Connecticut has some of the strictest gun laws in the country. You cannot walk into a gun store and come out with one. You have to take a certified gun safety course as part of your gun permit processing. You have to have a background check done. It costs money to get a permit. That in itself is often a deterrent to people wanting a gun permit. But there is no place that can decide if you are a psychopath determined to kill as many people possible in the shortest amount of time. In a free society, you cannot have a gun dealer being the person deciding you are too mentally ill to own a gun. They are no more capable of that than you or me. While criminal records are easily available, medical records are not, nor should they be. Too much of ourselves is already planted somewhere on the internet.
This is the time to take a look at gun control laws and see what can be fixed or outlawed. I don't like guns and choose not to own them, but if the guy across the street is a deer hunter who takes responsibility for his weapons, there is no blame game there either. On the other hand, a true hunter will tell you that the type of gun used in Newtown is not a hunting weapon. It is a weapon used for one purpose only, to kill the maximum amount of people in the amount of shortest time. There is no logical reason to own a firearm like this unless you are employed by law enforcement or the military.
Don't let the conversation on gun control wane. We lose so many children every year because they are innocent victims in the wrong place at the wrong time. These children are not the casualties in Newtown, they are the casualties in our cities. It doesn't matter if it is a mass shooting or not, their lives are gone before they ever get going. We must be the voices that do not stop. We must be the voices that are louder than the opposition.
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