There are really no words for what happened to the children of Newtown, Connecticut today. Kindergarten students were slaughtered at school. Five-year-old kids are bright, curious, trusting, imaginative, sensitive, and above all, innocent. But someone walked into their normally safe school here at Christmastime and took away their right to live. Someone armed with an assault rifle he shouldn't have had, bent on some unknown mission that was all in his head.
A tragedy, people say, unpreventable. This guy must have been an "isolated nutcase" and no amount of mental health screening would have caught him. We are helpless in the face of the gun lobby, especially in red states. Blah Blah Blah. You know we can't protect everyone 24-7, especially children trapped in school buildings. It must be the parents' or teachers' fault (the shooter killed both his parents, and his mother was a teacher). It must be the principal's fault (the principal was shot). Remember Columbine? That was just as isolated an incident, and the shooters were just bad seeds, and all of this really means nothing, and should change nothing - according to the Tea Party and the NRA.
Innocents dying in vain is the new patriotism that protects the Second Amendment.
In the days to come, we will hear a lot of shoulda-woulda-coulda, and Republicans in thrall to the National Rifle Association with spread their usual manure like filth over the graves of these little innocent babies. They will moan and weep about how "terrible" it would be for politicians to take any action at all, that it would be an invasion of gun owner rights to request any type of new restrictions even on assault weapons, which can't be used for hunting any creature except other humans. It's a right to own one for "sport" you know.
That's right - assault weapon shooting is a sport to these cretins, and we better not get in their way, by God, or they will just buy more guns and join militias and burn crosses and send their goons to threaten politicians. It's been that way for years and we have rolled over and accepted things like spineless wonders.
But today I think something changed. The right for these small trusting innocent children to live should trump the right to bear arms everywhere. What militia did this shooter represent? There shouldn't be a constant open season on children and unarmed people. Enough. State Legislatures shouldn't be passing laws to carry handguns in day cares, schools, and libraries. ENOUGH. These children and their families were free citizens, too. They deserved to live, and not be shot down like animations in some redneck game. Enough!!!!!!!
Joel Achenbach on Washington Post
Newtown, Conn., became Everytown, America, on this grim Friday. By mid-afternoon, the scale of the horror became clear: Twenty children had been slain, plus six of their protectors. The crime took another sick turn with news that the killer was the son of one of the teachers, who died separately in her home. This appeared Friday night to be a matricide that evolved into mass murder.
All this happened during the holiday season, as people around the country prepared for a big shopping weekend, or got ready for relatives coming to town or kids coming home from college. This is family time, a season of joy. Light the candles, decorate the tree.
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