Gun Violence

Can anything good possibly come out of the unspeakable carnage at an elementary school in Connecticut?

Yes – if the majority of Americans finally stand up to the gun-toting minority, and insist that enough is enough. The slaughter of innocent children should be ample motivation.

I am heartsick and outraged at what happened. It's a simple enough equation, really. America is a violent culture and it's armed to the teeth. So twenty children, none older than ten, are brutally gunned down because someone with an unstable mind had easy access to firearms.

It happened yesterday, as I write this – and just days after the mass murder in Oregon that, but for some trick of fate, could easily have exceeded the magnitude of Newtown. And it happened only months after the slaughter in Aurora, and the mass murder of Sikhs in Wisconsin by a bigoted gun nut.

It's been quite a year.

There's no way to predict and no way to stop the sort of violence that killed all these people. But we sure as hell can reduce the odds of it happening again by enacting stricter gun laws.

Tell the NRA to fuck off. Make pariahs of the Ted Nugents of this land.

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I've written this elsewhere, but it bears repeating:

On average, guns kill or wound 100,000 people every year in the United States, according to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. Over one million people have been killed by guns in the U.S. since 1968.

Lock and load that one.

Think John Lennon. Think Gabby Giffords, and the eight people who died senselessly in Arizona after being shot by an opponent of gun control.

The National Rifle Association has had our collective common sense in a hammerlock for too long now.