We are stealing our children's childhood. We have become a society where disputes are solved with violence. The latest killings in Connecticut have some people calling for gun control. While others are just as sure that the answer is just more guns until we become an armed camp. Somehow or other we are told that arming us all is what the framers of our Constitution had in mind in the the 2nd amendment. the last time I checked the Pentagon is not requesting or demanding that we quarter troops in our homes.
Our children are not safe in a theatre; they are not safe in a mall; they are not safe in their schools. Even very young children are not safe in their schools. After every massacre there is weeping and wailing and calls for common sense restriction of firearms. But not to worry, those silly calls for common sense will quickly die down and we will go back to thinking that violence is the cure for disagreement, feeling upset about our lives or just "because".
The therapists and psychologists will give us scripts to use with our children to make them feel calmer. We will all get wonderful resources on the web about where to get good advice. We will tell our children that they are safe. Children are not stupid. They know that the people who are supposed to be protecting them cannot do so in the face of madmen. They know that our society is impotent or at least chooses to be impotent to stop the senseless killings.
Some one will eventually tell us that his latest killer is mentally ill. It took no stroke of brilliance to figure that one out. Anyone killing innocent children is hardly the mental health poster child. There are mentally ill people in other societies as well, but they do not have access to guns the way mentally ill people in our society do.
Guns are for killing, there is no way around that. We are told they are for protection, but the data tell us that most people who have guns for their own protection wind up using them to kill others.
It is too late for the children of Connecticut, the survivors have already had their childhood stolen. Life will never again be the same for them.
Return with us now to those days of yesterday year, The Lone Ranger rides again. But this time it is not a TV show, this time it is developmentally delayed legislators and gun advocates who have a need to return to the wild west where we were all cowboys, only this time the Indians are our children.
