The sheer horror of the murder of so many innocent schoolchildren causes such a well of heart-wrenching sorrow, anger and dismay. We all want answers as to “why”, but the truth is even if the investigation uncovers that the killer left an explanation, the explanation probably won’t make sense to us. We can’t know what Adam Lanza was thinking, if he was hearing voices, if his mind had slipped into complete madness, what caused the anger that drove him. So, in the absence of clear answers, the quick answer is more gun-control laws, despite the fact that Adam Lanza took guns that weren’t his and killed the legal owner of those guns. Many politicians on the left began using these slain children as political weapons to ram more gun-control laws through. This politicizing of this tragic event sickens me and it alarms me too. Way too many Americans get sucked into these national melodramas, allowing their emotions to be played by these political opportunists. Facts and rationally assessing whether the proposed solutions would have had any impact at preventing this mass murder won’t play any part in the “national dialogue” many prominent left-wing media mouthpieces have suggested.
The media truly runs wild with baseless stories and few journalists seem to be alarmed at how many “facts” they’ve gotten wrong so far. First, they reported it was the brother, Ryan Lanza, who was the shooter. Most of the reports I read or saw on TV the first 2 days reported that the mother was a teacher at the elementary school and the classroom the shooter entered was his mother’s. With so much on-air time to fill with live reporting the complete left me full of questions. Like, I heard the shooter used an automatic weapon, I heard a lot about “assault weapons” and I heard lots of other dire warning about large round capacity magazines. Along with that some reporters ran with long rambles about Asperger’s, autism and the mental illness angle.
Here are the things I think I understand, by consulting two gun owners, one is my son (who happens to own an “assault weapon” and several hand guns) , and a friend who owns guns and has a lot of experience with guns and the law. The term “assault weapon” is sort of wishy-washy. The media uses that term rather loosely to define weapons that look like military issue weapons or long guns that hold more than 10 rounds. Lots of shotguns have more firepower than these so-called “assault weapons”, but let’s not let facts stand in the way of the Diane Feinstein-type gun “expert”. One can only marvel at the overwrought hysterical rantings of the gun-control crowd. Like, I said in a previous post, I don’t own any guns, nor do I have any desire to use any guns ever. However, I don’t care how many guns my neighbors own or Jim-Bob two states over, because the odds are my neighbors and Jim-Bob two states over aren’t going to turn into homicidal maniacs who go on a killing spree. Sure, we can say we should make sure these events never happen again, but the truth is we have no way to identify nor prevent the occasional homicidal nutjob from bursting on the public stage and creating havoc. Mass murderers aren’t some new phenomenon. The killer in this case, as in every other case, doesn’t obey the law and taking one option out of his hands won’t stop mass murders. In the same breath that reporters mention the assault weapons, they remind us that while Adam Lanza had some psychological problems, he was very intelligent. The whacko in Aurora, James Holmes ranked as a genius and even without access to “assault weapons”, he would have devised some other heinous method to perpetrate violence. His apartment certainly left clues to that intent. We can’t regulate intent nor can we legislate mass murder out of existence. And in today’s computer age information on how to do just about anything is just a few clicks away. The media is sure to regale us with lots of dishonest “facts” to propel new gun-control measures. To quote Fox News’ Juan Williams, when confronted with facts that new gun-control wouldn’t have prevented Adam Lanza’s rampage, “I don’t care, we need to do something!” And that’s the mentality of the political left in this country. They want the federal government to manage our lives from cradle to grave.
