As I write this the ‘Breaking News’ is just coming over the wires about a shooting in a school in Connecticut. My heart beat faster and I scrambled to do a ‘google search’ to get more information … I have two grandchildren in a daycare in Connecticut.
In a previous post regarding the F-35 I stated: “I don’t think I would stand at the edge of a runway and get arrested for this cause.” While I am adamantly opposed to the F-35, I put this ‘non-arrest’ limit to my ‘protest’ – and someone responded by asking if there were any social issues for which I would be willing to be arrested.
I believe the answer is “Yes”. One such situation for which I might find myself arrested would be upon learning there had been a shooting where my children or grandchildren were attending school – I would want to run into the school to find them, even under threat of being detained, restrained, or arrested by authorities.
It appears as if there are 26 persons dead – including 18 children – in Connecticut. The shooter is dead. Authorities say he was in his twenties and is believed to be the father of a student at the school.
I’m just so sick of guns. I don’t care how loud or soft they are, how large or small. Concealed or blatantly displayed – I’m so very weary of them, and weary of our society’s on-going laissez-faire attitude toward them.
The United States is sending two Patriot air defense batteries to Turkey along with 400 troops. I’m weeping.
The argument is made that guns don’t kill; people do. That phrase sounds so hollow just now. It was a person with guns that did the killing this morning. And I just wonder … If children dying won’t be sufficient to shock us into some more reasonable position with regard to the availability of firearms, what possible good would my getting arrested do?
Perhaps I could be accused of over-reacting to an unusual circumstance. But shootings in this country are not so ‘unusual’ anymore. We are averaging 20 mass shootings per year in this country. Because we have not acted responsibly when these kinds of things were “unusual” we now have a new “normal”. Is there a connection between our country’s readiness to build weapons and send them overseas and our reticence to limit the prevalence of firearms on our own soil?
We live in a culture of violence – it is a culture we have created. We are suffering from “societal arrested development”. Guns are not going to save us. Guns are not making us any more secure. Arrested? Indeed.
I weep for the children, and for those who loved them and today have lost them.
Amen, Mark, Amen. I have always said it is people with guns that kill people. We need to stand up and be counted; enough is enough. As you said, guns are not making us any more secure.
Sooooooo agree with you!