Gripped by anger and tears, President Barack Obama reacted to Friday’s massacre of 20 innocent children and six adults at Newtown, Conn. with a pledge to put an end to senseless mass killings.
“We cannot tolerate this anymore. These tragedies must end. And to end them we must change. We cannot accept events like this as routine. Are we really prepared to say that we’re powerless in the face of such carnage, that the politics are too hard? Are we prepared to say that such violence visited on our children year after year is somehow the price of freedom?”
In an emotional speech at Newtown the president didn’t mention gun controls. That wasn’t necessary. The only “change” that he can urge is to take military weapons and ammunition off the streets.
He concluded by reading off the names of the 20 dead children and repeating his pledge, “ . . . For those of us who remain, let us find the strength to carry on and make our country worthy of their memory.”
Obama can be expected to follow up by proposing gun control laws that prohibit the manufacture and sale of automatic pistols and rifles, which have no legitimate purpose except for the defense of the people by the military and police. The production of ammunition designed to do the maximum damage by breaking apart as soon as they enter a human body so that fragments tear into bone and muscle ensuring death should also be banned.
A pistol or rifle that can fire 30 or more of those bullets within seconds has no acceptable purpose in civilian hands. Yet Friday’s massacre was the fourth such rampage by a berserk assassin armed with military firearms in the four years Mr. Obama has been president, giving him the wrenching assignment each time to visit the ravaged communities to comfort survivors and share their anguished disbelief.
What the president is asking, is what kind of a society have we created that tolerates the senseless murder of innocents? What twisted logic persuades us that flooding the nation with such perfect instruments of death and destruction in some way protects our freedom or strengthens our society?
And the answers to these questions clearly are that we’ve followed a good idea out the window and over the cliff. Law-abiding citizens should be able to buy and keep hunting guns and to buy ammunition for them. Shooting skeet is an expensive but fun sport. Carefully constructed and controlled rifle and pistol ranges provide safe venues for gun lovers to improve their skills.
None of these lawful, acceptable uses of firearms require automatic weapons capable of slaughtering 26 people in less time than the average target shooter will take to get ready to fire his or her first shot.
What our nation needs are laws controlling guns and ammunition that would seem reasonable and desirable to 90 percent — or perhaps 99 percent — of the American people who agree with President Obama that we are not powerless to stop this heart-breaking carnage.
Sandy Hook School in Newtown, Conn. could have been Jefferson Elementary School in Iola, Kan. The names would have sounded the same: “Charlotte, Daniel, Olivia, Josephine, Ana, Dylan, Madeleine, Catherine, Chase, Jesse . . .”
How can we say that we must accept those lifeless little bodies are somehow the price of freedom?
— Emerson Lynn, jr.
