In Newtown, Connecticut, today, there are presents under Christmas trees, garlands of festive holly hanging from homes and children lying on the cold slabs of the town’s morgue.
This small town northeast of New York City joins a long and tragic list where the ills of American society are manifest in mass shooting, where children are at the end of a barrel; when a deranged gunman blurred by anger and mental illness sees the pupils at Sandy Hook Elementary School as collateral damage; and its teachers as targets for practice.
Why? That’s a question that will take weeks and months to figure out.
How? Because guns are readily available; because politicians lack the moral backbone to tackle those who hide behind their constitutional right to bear arms. And as long as this governmental blindness and societal libertarianism exist, places like Newtown will bare their souls in mad moments of anguish and tearful agony. Mothers without daughters, fathers without sons will ask why.
Why their boy or girl?
Because gun laws are too lax. Because Americans can own arsenals in their homes. Because assault weapons belong in the living room as well as on the battlefield. Because Americans can, and do, believe it is their right by birth to possess weapons.
Until gun control is taken seriously, until such time as weapons are pried from the hands of most, there will be more children on the cold slabs of morgues. That is the price of such folly.
