With the details still developing out of Newtown, Connecticut most people are seriously disturbed at the news that a crazed shooter has killed 20 elementary school students, 6 adults (including the Principal and the School Psychologist), and himself. 24-year-old Adam Lanza has been identified as the shooter in this incredible tragedy, while his younger brother is being questioned as a possible second shooter; the devastating massacre is only compounded by the fact that Lanza’s mother was found murdered in her New Jersey residence as well. It goes without saying that while shootings and suicides have become common place around the holidays of late (and as recently as last week) a shooting and man-made disaster of this sort can and will never be common place because it represent the utmost level of evil, insanity, and corruption of the human soul possible.
The inevitable knee jerk reaction to terrible crimes such as these is the call for stricter and more stringent gun control in the United States. I have seen it already cropping up on Facebook and other social networks, and embedded between the lines of the news coverage. In fact, when the story broke I was out of the United States in Montreal, Canada and I was having a conversation with a few baristas about the goings on. Our news is deeply embedded in their own I have noticed, while we hear very little from our northern neighbors…possibly because they have less incidents of this sort, I could really say. Regardless the sentiment of the baristas (with whom I had no desire to debate or deeply discuss the matter due to time restrictions) mirrored that of my American friends on the social networks, and it certainly does raise the question—when are we going to address gun control in our country?
Good piece, well balanced, everything in it’s proper perspective.