Many readers will by now have heard about the horrific mass shooting at an elementary school in Connecticut. How people can recover from such ghastly events I do not know; I imagine many do not. Their sorrow and grief must be harrowing.
What we could do, were the U.S. civilized, is take serious remedial and preventive measures. Predictably, the usual cast of depraved fools are cynically trying to stop serious discussion of how to prevent such events with preemptive accusations that any such discussion would constitute a "cynical" exploitation of the event! Talk about shameless hypocrisy! Countries with real gun control almost never have these kinds of events, the U.S. does, and increasingly so. Period. (Recall this.) This was one of the weapons used by the shooter: ban it. Ban all semiautomatic, rapid fire weapons. Ban the semiautomatic variation of the M-16 rifle and the pump-action 12-gauge shotgun used by the Aurora, Colorado mass murderer. No one needs these weapons for any legitimate or civilized purpose, other than police and the military (even the police wouldn't need them if others didn't have them). Let hunters buy their hunting rifles, let all citizens purchase a musket for self-defense, as the framers of the Constitution intended. But there is no reason why anyone other than law enforcement should have access to the kinds of weapons that have figured in all the recent mass shootings.
Perhaps if everyone wrote to their elected representatives demanding a ban on the kinds of weapons used in these mass shootings, something would happen? Is it possible that the mass murder of kindergarteners might prompt the cowards in Congress to act?
UPDATE: In a case of cruel but revealing irony: a deranged would-be killer of children in China, but armed only with a knife, wounds nearly two dozen, but kills no one. (Thanks to Michael Sevel for the pointer.)
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