http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/12/14/every-day-is-the-day-to-talk-about-gun-control.htmlI have a daughter in a public elementary school in the District of Columbia. When I read news of a school shooting, it touches a particularly intimate place in me. To be a parent is to be haunted by fears. I can contemplate my own death without unease, but every goodbye to one of my children is shaded by dread. What if?
That "what if?" has now darkened a whole town in Connecticut. But of course, it's not the first such darkening. Almost uniquely in the world, the United States suffers massacre after massacre after massacre: in schools, in workplaces, in movie theaters, on city streets. And after each such massacre, there follows a great hushing: don't you dare mention the most obvious reason for this unique American horror.
I experienced a small portion of this reaction personally today.
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A permissive gun regime is not the only reason that the United States suffers so many atrocities like the one in Connecticut. An inadequate mental health system is surely at least as important a part of the answer, as are half a dozen other factors arising from some of the deepest wellsprings of American culture.
Nor can anybody promise that more rational gun laws would prevent each and every mass murder in this country. Gun killings do occur even in countries that restrict guns with maximum severity.
But we can say that if the United States worked harder to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people, there would be many, many fewer atrocities like the one in Connecticut.
And I'll say: I'll accept no lectures about "sensitivity" on days of tragedy like today from people who work the other 364 days of the year against any attempt to prevent such tragedies.
It's bad enough to have a gun lobby. It's the last straw when that lobby also sets up itself as the civility police. It may not be politically possible to do anything about the prevalence of weapons of mass murder. But it damn well ought to be possible to complain about them - and about the people who condone them.
