December 21 is Past and We’re All Still Here — Well, Most of Us

The Mayan calendar rolled over — or whatever that phenomenon was that took place on December 21, 2012 — and there was no planet-wide apocalypse. If you are disappointed, you might need to have your meds adjusted. All of the doomsayers will, I suppose, just have to pick another date for the world to end.

The world did end a week before that projected apocalypse for 20 little children and six school employees at Sandy Hook Elementary, in New Town, Connecticut. And a large amount of the joy was taken out of the world for their family members.

This has once again caused the great debate over guns and gun laws to surface and take on shrill tones. Some say it is too early to have this discussion. Some mourn the fact that most people ignore the discussion altogether, except just after a gun-related tragedy.  

I spent most of my first two decades in a Western Red State. My friends and relatives owned guns. My grandmother had a gun. When I was in Junior High School, we got a couple of days off from school for the start of deer hunting season. I didn’t hunt, but was glad to have the days off. I think everyone appreciated the break, except perhaps the deer, but nobody was asking them.

In school I took an NRA gun safety course. If you had asked me at that time for my opinion of the National Rifle Association, I suppose it would have been pretty high. After all, guns could be dangerous if used improperly, and here was an organization, working to prevent the misuse and mitigate the danger of firearms. Sounds like a pretty good mission statement to me.

But, in the wake of the New Town slaughter, the NRA, which had been silent on the matte for a few days, has issued a statement. Wayne La Pierre, the leader and spokesperson for the NRA, has stated that the solution to school violence is not the banning of slaughter weapons, or the elimination of clips that hold a large supply of ammunition without reloading, but more guns in the schools. The NRA solution to school shootings is to put armed guards in schools or to suggest teachers bring guns with them into the classroom.

This seems to me like telling a guy he is an alcoholic and then telling him the solution is to visit more bars during Happy Hour. I don’t get it.

The mother of Adam Lanza, the Sandy Hook shooter’s mother was also a victim. It’s too bad she didn’t own a gun or two to defend herself. Oh wait, it was her guns that were used to kill her and all those little children. Her death brings the count to 27, and Adam Lanza’s suicide brings the total to 28.

 

If the NRA really wanted to preserve some shred of respectability, it would admit that we really don’t need large clips or AK-47s to hunt deer or to defend our homes from buglers. They lose credibility by maintaining their inflexible stand against limiting some of the privileges of gun-enthusiasts. I suspect that they will lose some members over this stand. I hope it will lose them a Congress member or two.