This is my column published in the Spectrum on 12/24/12:
“As I look at the photos of those who died, I wonder how many more must die before we come to our senses and begin to converse with each other while searching together for a way to reduce gun deaths in our nation?”
I concluded an earlier column in August after the Aurora Colorado tragedy with those words. Sadly the conversation never happened.
Now here I am again with horrific images floating through my mind of a Connecticut grade school and the unimaginable carnage that leaves the families and friends of twenty innocent 6 and 7-year-old children in unbearable pain and grief. In the midst of the chaos the loving dedicated professionals, who went to work on that Friday committed to doing their job of enriching the minds of these precious children, acted heroically, six at the cost of their own lives.
Many of the first responders rushed onto the scene to help and were confronted with overwhelming horror and helplessness.
My thoughts return to my own experience with guns. I lived in the Northeast for nearly half of my life where gun ownership was not encouraged. My family included adopted children some of whom came from deeply troubled early childhood experiences. At no time did I consider it desirable to have guns in the home.
Then I moved to the South and the culture was more accepting of guns. With my children gone I purchased two revolvers. Trying to develop and maintain a reasonable level of proficiency I visited a local shooting range periodically and did some target shooting at the bulls eye type targets.
One day in the stall next to me there was a young man with some type of a weapon that was larger than a pistol but smaller than an assault weapon. His cardboard target was the silhouette of a person. As he fired rapidly he was becoming more excited verging on what at the time I thought to be ecstasy. I left the range feeling stunned, went home and locked up my guns and eventually sold them.
“Guns don’t kill, people do” has become a cliché. It is an expression intended to limit thought. But is it true?
What is the attraction of semiautomatic instruments of death? As you approach Las Vegas on I-15 there is a large billboard with the photo of a military style weapon, large clip and all, along with an invitation to visit the gun store and to shoot it. With all of the pleasures available in Las Vegas, what is the visceral feeling evoked by shooting an instrument of death?
Do mentally disturbed killers who engage in these senseless slaughters find power in the gun, power that is promised by our advertising, films, and other violent cultural symbols? Is it the availability of guns that empowers the powerless with tragic consequences?
In the coming weeks we will learn more details about why these precious people lost their lives in Newtown.
Will we do anything this time?
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