Allegedly, out of respect for the victims and their families, the NRA waited a full week after the Sandy Hook Massacre before issuing a statement. Apart from the usual sloganeering ("Guns don't kill people, people kill people" and "More guns means less crime"), the NRA issued a sensational new dictum calling on the nation to support armed police officers at all schools. If that's your best response to tragedies like Sandy Hook, I guess the debate is over before it's even started. I mean even if the NRA's suggestion was plausible, how long would it be before we were reading about some school cop going postal and executing a bunch of kids during recess? And after that, what pray tell would the NRA's next move be...arm the children?
Blame video games, blame the media, blame the internet, blame single parent families, blame valueless upbringing. It matters not who or what you blame because these issues are not going away and therefore we must conclude that the tragedies will not end while society's "aberrations" have easy access to weapons that could take down an airliner. And if we were somehow able to prevent these massacres at our schools based on the NRA's lastest proposal, those bent on executing the innocent would simply set their sights on churches, shopping malls, movie theaters, and bingo halls, instead.
On the exact same day as the Sandy Hook Massacre, a 36-year-old man rampaged through a Chinese elementary school slashing 22 children. While just as abhorrent as the nightmare in Newtown, no youngsters in China were buried in the aftermath. They will play another day, get hugged by loved ones, and live their lives. One can't help to think how the outcome might have been different in China if the same gun culture that exists in America was prevalent there and when these two outcomes are juxtaposed the point is delivered more eloquently than any 3 000 word essay ever could. For those who have genuinely thought it through, there is really only one sound course of action to preventing calamities like Sandy Hook, but it would appear that this is a directive America is loath to grasp.
You will never convince me that anyone other than a soldier at war requires an assault rifle. Ever. Torture the language of the 2nd Amendment all you want, get 4.3 million people to sign a petition, threaten to impeach the President, remind me how many have sacrificed their lives in the name of liberty. I'm still unmoved.
If you need to search for meaning this Christmas, don't look to America's gun culture; you won't find any there.
