Are We Totally Helpless?

Where is the outrage? Where is the agony? Where is the will?

December 14, 2012, is a date that should live in infamy. But there have been too many such dates.

We are all heartbroken that such a thing can happen.

Now is the time to grieve for the senseless deaths of 20 young children and six of their teachers and administrators.

Tomorrow is the time for action. And anger, but a focused anger.

Anger at whom? It does no good to be angry at Adam Lanza, a troubled soul not given the healing he needed. In any event, he is now beyond our anger or our healing.

We should seek out and focus some of our anger on those who arm unbalanced people and set them loose on ourselves, our families and our children. Who could do such a thing? Look in the mirror. We have all looked the other way as pusillanimous politicians too frightened to stand up to extremists in an industrial lobby (the NRA) refused to focus on protecting our children.

We have averted our eyes from those who fail to provide adequately for treatment of mental disorders. A glance at Adam Lanza's eyes in the most widely published photo would suggest to any viewer that something is not right. But research, diagnosis and treatment are expensive. So all too often we pass the cost on to the families of those afflicted or to fellow citizens in their vicinity when they lose touch with reality.

What was wrong with Adam Lanza? Some say he suffered from a form of high functioning autism. Others say he could not read body language - another way of saying the same thing. He plainly lacked empathy with his victims - yet another way of saying the same thing.

A word some use to describe such behavior is "Asperger's syndrome."

In general, psychologists don't associate Asperger's with violence, but research seems sparse. Here is a link to one very brief study. Asperger's has only been recognized since about 1994 and is about to be reclassified as part of a larger class: "autism spectrum disorders." This case cries out for a more complete study.

Public safety is at stake.

Guns are too readily available. That is often used as a reason for inaction. We will not be able to achieve perfect success. Too hard.

Let's get the issue out of the "too hard" file.

Perfection need not be the goal. Any improvement will help.

Another group to focus on are those who denigrate our teachers. Remember: six teachers and administrators went into harm's way to protect their children. Why would anyone believe the same teachers were any less dedicated to the education of the children in their charge than to their safety? Who among our self-appointed education "experts" or elected officials know anything about how to educate children but the latest fads among people of their own political persuasion?

 I said focus our anger. What I really mean is focus our determination. In particular, focus on our elected officials who follow aggressive policies of arming everyone with concealed weapons.

Americans are said to own around 270 to 300 million guns. What for?

Gun laws vary from state to state. In California guns can be sold only through licensed dealers. Would-be buyers must wait ten days to get their hands on a gun so they can be checked out.These laws were put in place under Governor Ronald Reagan, largely in reaction to fears of the Black Panthers.

In Arizona adults without a criminal record can go to a dealer with ID and get a firearm on the spot. Who are Arizonans afraid of?

Many states relaxed gun laws in recent years. Virginia and New Mexico now let people take guns into bars. Texas and Utah allow citizens to carry concealed weapons in schools. Wyatt Earp would never have allowed that.

Last Friday — the day Adam Lanza killed 26 students and teachers in an elementary school, Michigan passed a law allowing concealed weapons in schools, churches and hospitals. What, we want to turn our schools into "gunfight at the OK corral?"

On a typical day in America around 100 people are shot. American children are 13 times more likely to be killed with a gun than those in any other country. Do we love our children? Let's control our guns. Not because it is easy, but because it is hard.

Since Obama became president, there have been eleven large scale mass shootings:

November 2009, Army psychiatrist Major Nidal Malik Hasan shot 13 people dead at Fort Hood, Texas.

Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was one of 17 victims of a mass shooting in January 2011 in Tucson, Arizona. She survived. Six others, including a nine year old girl, died.

In July James Holmes killed 12 and injured 58 at a cinema in Aurora, Colorado.

And Sandy Hook Elementary School.

But there are others. This year alone, there have been 13 multiple murders, including Sandy Hook.

The killings at Sandy Hook Elementary School last Friday were in a class by themselves. Connecticut’s chief medical examiner said the children he examined had been shot between three and 11 times. He added: “I have been at this more than a third of a century. This is the worst I have seen.” Police found the bodies of 14 children and teacher Lauren Rousseau huddled together in a heap.

Maybe we can't completely end such occurrences, but we have to try.

Here are some things we can do:

1. Reinstate a permanent assault weapons ban; 
2. Create a federal registry for licenses and gun ownership, contingent upon safety training and proper storage education (currently prohibited by the Firearm Ownership Protection Act of 1986);
3. End the “Gun Show Loophole” to the Brady Law, mandating that every gun purchaser be subject to mandatory background checks and wait periods;
4. Oppose concealed carry laws;
5. Mandate permanent gun serial numbers – end gun trafficking;
6. Mandate ballistic fingerprinting– this means being able to trace a bullet back to a specific gun, not just a make;
7. Encourage universal child-safety locks – we child-proof our Tylenol and our cars, why not our guns?
8. Limit purchases to “one gun per month” or “one gun per three months” laws –prevent traffickers from stockpiling guns for the black-market;
9. Most important of all - do away with the fiction (former Chief Justice Warren Burger called it a "fraud") that the Second Amendment protects a personal right to own firearms. "To bear arms" is a term of art that means "to serve in the military." The purpose of the Second Amendment was to prevent establishment of a large standing army.It failed in that purpose long ago.

Regulation of firearms is properly a political issue, not a constitutional issue. There was a time when the NRA understood that. A time before NRA adopted the doctrine of Huey Newton.