The Newtown, CT Murders

If we continue to do nothing about access to guns, does that not make us all complicit in every death past, present and in the future? 


Here is my Facebook post about this horrible mass shooting today:

I keep seeing posts and hearing on the news that this most recent mass shooting is so much worse because children were killed. No it's not. It's exactly the same. Every horrible incident where innocent people are killed by someone with a gun is equally as bad as the next. Or more precisely, the last, as we continue to learn nothing and do nothing about access to guns.


This kind of thinking reminds me of the bridge collapse in Minneapolis a few years back. Someone was quoted as saying something like God must have been looking down on those children in that bus as it hung precariously on the ledge; they all survived, if I remember correctly. Yeah. And those people who perished, falling to their deaths? My takeaway, based on the ignorant Christian who said this, is that apparently God could give a shit about those who did die.

Now, let's go back to today's events. Are the children who survived looked upon by God differently than the children who died? We as a society - of all faiths and no faiths - need to think before we speak. And way more important than that, we need to act on guns and gun violence and stop being stupid, or more likely disgustingly and knowingly disingenuous, about the difference between hunters having a right to their guns and citizens thinking they need guns for protection - which are two very different things - and that that alleged right is more important than the safety of the populace as a whole. My president, who I love, is just as wrong and chicken shit about this issue as every other person has been willingly complicit in perpetrating the lie of exactly what the second amendment to the constitution really means.

Twenty-seven people are dead (last count). Are we really going to sit back and as a society no nothing once more? What the fuck? I know people in the Newtown/Danbury area of Connecticut. Some of these dead could be people I know, or children of people I know. How can we do nothing to stop this from happening again? My heart aches for every person who has died in one of these mass killings, and my heart knows that we need to restrict guns in order to stop this kind of killing. We are always going to have crazy people in our society, there is nothing we can really do about that. And there is no way for us to know when a previously sane person is going to go off the deep end. But there is something we can do to keep guns from people. Is it severe to do it? Yes. Have severe restrictions been successful in lowering the deaths at the hands of gunmen in other countries? Absolutely. What is wrong with this country that we can't take the same brave steps that others have taken?

Maybe it's just not important enough.