Slaughter  of the Innocents and the Search for the Inexplicable

December 15, 2012 -  How could this be – a deranged young man gunning down 27 innocent people?   How could it happen in an idyllic  town in Connecticut,  a state with among the strictest gun laws in America?  How could such an event be prevented?

As former New York City major, Rudy Guliani, remarked,” It is time for everyone to be humble about our ignorance,” or words to that effect.

There will, no doubt, be multiple explanations -  the NRA, the second amendment,  violent video games,  pseudo-commando mentality based on movie characters,  failure to detect or monitor schizophrenia,   our drug scene, partisan American politics, the availability of 200 million guns among 310 million Americans, lax gun control laws forbidding sale of assault weapons, i.e "weapons of war" – but no one knows whre to go and what to do..   It’s all speculation and handwringing about the inexplicable.

We ought to welcome a renewed debate. We ought to outlaw guns  and semia-utomatic weapons designed for combat.  But we may never know why a woman teacher of elementary students had those semi-automatic assault wePONA  her son used to kill her and 20 young children in a kindergarten class.  We may never come up with a solution of how to prevent a lone wolf intent on committing evil deeds

Maybe it is time to acknowledge that America, compared to other Western cultures,  has a history of gun violence. Perhaps this is prompted by our frontier Wild West mentality, gangster  movies,  gun-ridden TV series, or our violent  video games.  Or maybe it’s our freedom-loving, and freedom-permitting culture, where anything and everything goes.

Meanwhile, as President Obama so sadly said,  “Our hearts are broken.” Let us grieve for the loss of the innocents before we try to explain the unexplainable.

Tweet: It is time for grieving and then reassessment of our gun laws.