I’m remembering today when my boys were in kindergarten and I’m betting you are, too. I can still see what they wore on their first day and how by this time of the year they were making macaroni ornaments and paper dreidels and counting the days until Christmas.
It was an exciting time, a parental rite of passage when you entrusted a school with that which is most precious to you in all the world, worried perhaps about bullies or a missed bus.
But a madman bent on massacre?
Today, words just…. well, they fail.
What manner of man goes into a school and kills little children?
Columbine, Virginia Tech, Aurora, Tucson. All beyond belief.
But the wholesale slaughter or five- and six-year-olds?
Words… there aren’t any.
There is much that we don’t know today, as Newtown and the nation try to shake off the stupor of disbelief and begin to grieve. But there are three things that we instinctively know:
That Adam Lanza was mentally ill.
That even so, he qualified to legally own guns.
And that nothing will change as a result of a classroom full of dead kindergarteners.
Oh, there will be talk. There is nothing that politicians do better than talk.
After Columbine, there were calls to plug the gun-show loophole, the one that allows any nut to buy a gun from a private dealer, no questions asked. Nothing changed.
After Virginia Tech, there was a push to flag would-be gun buyers who had documented mental problems. It never led to more rigorous background checks.
After Tucson, there was talk about outlawing high-capacity magazines, the kind allow a shooter to fire and fire and fire and fire without stopping to reload. Once again, nothing.
If the massacres of the past are any indication, this nation’s leaders won’t do anything in the wake of Friday’s massacre. The gun lobby is simply too strong.
Stronger even, than a classroom full of dead kindergarteners.
If you’re feeling helpless and frustrated, you’re not alone. If you’re angry, you should be.
The gun lobby and its acolytes in Congress will resort to all its favorite bumper sticker sayings and mournfully insist that now is not the time to politicize such a tragedy.
Well, if not now, then when exactly?
There have been 61 mass murders involving guns in the United States since 1982, according to Mother Jones, which tracks gun violence. Of the 12 deadliest, six have occurred since 2007.
Since Columbine in 1999, there have been 31 school shootings in this country, ABC News reports. Meanwhile, there have been 14 in the rest of the world — combined.
The gun murder rate in the U.S. is nearly 20 times higher than the next 22 wealthiest nations combined, according to a study in the Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery. Eighty percent of people killed by guns in the 23 richest countries are Americans. Eighty seven percent of children killed by guns are American children.
Our children.
Newtown isn’t even our first mass shooting this week. That dubious honor goes to Oregon,where a gunman murdered two shoppers on Tuesday before killing himself.
Then there was Minneapolis, where five people were murdered at a sign store in September. And Wisconsin, where six Sikh temple members died in August when a neo-Nazi opened fire.
In July, it was Aurora, Col., where 12 people were watching a movie, and in May it was Seattle, when a gunman opened fire in a coffee shop.
April was Tulsa (five dead) and Oakland, Ca, (seven dead), scene the deadliest attack on a school since Virginia Tech in 2007.
Until now.
There are those who predict that this will be different from other tragedies, from the high school kids killed and movie goers and shoppers. They’ll say that we draw the line at 5 year olds.
I hope they’re right because on Monday, parents all over this country will be sending their children off to school, wondering if they will see them again.
How much we are willing to take? How many children gone to their grave are enough before we demand that our leaders on both sides of the gun debate disarm and have a serious talk about how to stem the bloody tide?
Or do we simply shrug our shoulders and accept that it is now a childhood rite of passage in America, that our kids must, at times, cover their eyes as they leave school, that mere babies will appear on the news, talking of buwwets whizzing by?
It’s time once again to grieve but this time let’s be angry, too, because this time “thoughts and prayers” aren’t nearly enough.
Newtown could be Anytown.
by Laurie Roberts
(Column published Dec. 15, 2012, The Arizona Republic)
