blackest friday

Wow.  Today was hard.  I don’t know if it’s because I’m a new dad, or if it’s the sheer horror, but I have not been this stunned since 9/11.

This morning in the beatific little town of Newtown, Connecticut, 20yr old Adam Lanza shot and killed his mother, then drove her car to the elementary school where she taught kindergarten, and killed 7 more adults and 20 children before taking his own life.  Twenty children.  Reports conflict, but indicate he used a .22 rifle and had two semi-automatic handguns in the car.  All were legally purchased, the two handguns by his mother.

Where do you start with that?  How do you wrap your brain around what might possibly motivate someone to enter a classroom, point a rifle at 5 year olds and start shooting?  We feel we understood Columbine – disgruntled teens acting out against their peers.  We imagine the same must be true of the Colorado theater shooting.  But this defies understanding.  This young man was clearly down a very deep, dark, lonely hole.  Some sources say he had Asperger’s.

As soon as the details started coming out of Newtown, the cry went up for gun control.  If only it were that simple.  Don’t get me wrong – I firmly believe fewer guns means fewer shootings.  But the guns are here.  It doesn’t matter how strict you make the law, there is almost one gun for every man, woman and child in America.  Most of those guns are legally owned and not likely to exit just because you’ve suddenly changed the rules.  So while I think it does need to happen, and right now, I don’t think it’s going to fix anything in the next twenty years or so.  What then can we do?  The answer is so painfully obvious that you know conservatives (read Republicans) won’t stand for it.

I don’t say that to ruffle feathers.  This deserves to be way bigger than party lines.  But very simply, economic conservatives don’t want to pay for universal health care.  That means there is no public money to treat those who most need it.  Those who most pose a threat to the rest of us.  Until that fatally short-sighted perspective changes, there will still be 185 times as many gunshot fatalities in the States as the next closest country.  Like gun rights proponents are fond of saying, guns don’t kill people (which is asinine), people kill people.  Perhaps unintentionally, they do have a point.  Treat the problem, not the symptom.  This poses a real quandary for conservatives.  They want their guns, but are unwilling to pay into a system that would all but prevent getting shot by them.

As food for thought, 22 children were stabbed by a knife-wielding adult in China today.  No fatalities.

So it’s been a long day.  We’ve had some tears (mine came in tandem with the President’s) and a lot of hugs.  I’m fighting a cold but couldn’t help holding on to Avery longer than is prudent.  Hope she doesn’t pay for my emotion.

We’ve been trying to take a good family photo for Christmas, and we thought we’d do that today to see if that could help us get some perspective.  It at least provided a distraction for a while.

Then it pops into your head that all those parents probably had all their Christmas shopping done, and returning those gifts is going to be hell.

I will probably avoid the news for a week or so.

If you are interested in having (or maintaining) an open mind the next time gun control comes up in conversation, here are some thought provoking and unbiased stats about mass shootings in the US.

Man, we were having such a great week, weren’t we?  I’m going to save all that until tomorrow.  It doesn’t belong in this post.

Hug your kids.  Talk about it, but keep it at their level.  Hug your neighbours and their kids.  Look them all in the eye and reassure them that we’re all in this together.

Now is a terrific time to reach out.  Not just in solidarity, but because somewhere out there are people that desperately need our help.