How many children died during the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School last month? How many would have died before their births six years or thereabouts prior should their mothers or Barack Obama had chosen their deaths?
Pretty much about the same numbers.
Yet Adam Lanza is a cad, and Barack Obama a hero as he pronounces new gun control legislation. The pot calling the kettle, dare we ask?
Dare we ask. Dare we ask.
What is the difference? One is not using children but, rather, wanting them to approach him for their own good. The other is a political hack employing children as an emotional backdrop to his own selfish pandering towards an electorate, which, he says, wants answers.
Well, what answers are there? There is nothing in the President's ideas which would have prevented the Sandy Hook massacre or Aurora, Colorado theater attack. Nothing. The plain fact is that the only type of gun control which may, and we stress very much the word may, actually affect violent acts would be to ban guns entirely. That, of course, can only be brought about by totalitarianism. Even then, would there not be a black market, and underground movement of guns and attack paraphernalia? In short, those intending to do great harm to their fellows will still be quite readily able to do so.
By what sense can it be usefully argued that adding hardships to innocent citizens will make any given thing better? To be sure, there are times when we must try: laws against murder must be on the books despite the knowledge that murders will still be committed, as a symbol of what we stand for as a nation truly interested in the well being of the person. What will all these Executive Orders and what not really do? Nothing except to impose additional and unwarranted difficulties on the law abiding.
The situation isn't much different from what Americans face daily as the result of the border hassles brought on by 9/11. In the name of fighting terrorism we have made it harder for law abiding citizens to do something as simple and straightforward as visiting Canada. There is no particular reason to believe that making things tough on legal gun owners (or even potential legal gunholders) will keep savagery at bay in the future.
But the government has to do something, right? Barack Obama can't just sit there while all sorts of bogeymen lay in wait for the children, can he? This is political grandstanding at its very worst, for the worst of all possible reasons: one man's legacy.
The President is using children as deflector shields in his continuing assault on the Constitution. Such acts are not admirable.
If someone wants to kill, maim, or endanger a great population of people, if they are bound and determined to do great harm, then they will do it. They will do it however they can. Timothy McVeigh used fertilizer; the Muslin extremists of September 11, 2001 used airplanes. Laws will not stop the insane. They simply will not.
But do you know what will be lost among the people as we write this? They will presume something which we have not said nor will we say. They will presume that we are talking about guns and gun crime.
We are not.
Do you believe for a moment that stricter gun control laws will prevent another horrible event such as the one our nation suffered Friday? To be sure, such actions may - only may, we tell you, and with serious reservations about that - somewhat affect things. Perhaps a mild offender against humanity will be thus restrained. A man with an itch to scratch. But will those determined to destroy every vestige of humanity within us be stopped at that? Will a man intending to destroy humanity stop at that?
He will not. He will do whatever he can to achieve his goals. And he will use whatever materials which are at his disposal to do so.
We are not dealing with rational people when we discuss the whats and whys of Sandy Hook Elementary. To consider them as though they were rational people will not protect us, or our children. They are irrational people, even should their actions be of the result of things not truly their fault. They may be insatiably selfish, or they may be evil; they may be truly insane. There may be many other things which we cannot fathom. Reason means nothing to their situations; yet non-reason means everything. We will not help ourselves by being unreasonable.
The idea that our weakest yet most trusting citizens, our grade school children, can be subjected to such horrors is perhaps one of the most awful aspects of the school shootings. How can we explain such terrible things to those so young?
We really can't. There is no explanation for what happened yesterday. There may be reasons, but only bad ones at that. There simply isn't an answer to the question Why? Some will blame God; others, the lack of God. Others still may say merely that 'things happen'. At the end of the day we are right back to the problem of evil in the world. How do we handle that?
For starters, exactly as we are handling it now. We think of the kids, teachers, and families who are forever scarred by the tragedy and we help them however we can: prayers, aid, and sympathy. Then we remember the heroes who did what they could in light of such terrible circumstances: the teachers and administrators who did what they could to save who they could, by pulling students into classrooms or barring a classroom door with their body to keep the gunman out. Finally, we do what we can to help keep such attacks from happening in the future.
We do what we can; yet the specter of evil will always be present.
All we can ultimately do is rise above it. We Americans are quite good at that, when you think about. It's what's happening right now in response to the Sandy Hook tragedy. They will overcome it. We will overcome it. Why? Not because it's all that we can do, but because it's the right thing to do. Evil will never win so long as we rise against it, each and every time it rears its ugly head. We are doing it right now with our prayers, tears, and support for the people of Newton and particularly its children. We are defeating evil. And we will be stronger for the effort.
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