We had news of a school shooting on Friday 12/14/2012. It happened in Newtown, Connecticut. As of this morning the death total is 26 with 20 of them children. It is a bit unusual that it was an elementary school. It was also unusual in that the guns seem to have been purchased by the first victim, Nancy Lanza, the mother of the shooter. We still don’t have a complete story about the shooter and how he acquired his guns. It does appear that they were acquired legally. CNN has had a sorrow fest for the last few days about this. There is a lot of wringing of hands by politicians and it does appear to be genuine
The gun lobby and their enablers have come out in force. Ross Douthat of the NY Times, wrote an article entitled “Loss of Innocents” and the title is a fair summary of what comes next. It is impossible to shield children from evil. At a certain level he is correct, we cannot shield them from all evil, but shouldn’t we even try to shield them from this?
As a country we talk about freedom but we are oh so willing to restrict freedoms if it serves a purpose. Free speech is hardly unrestricted. We have copyright laws to control what is printed. We have libel laws to punish speech after the fact. We have various laws about pornography, especially child pornography. In an age when images can be easily manipulated there is no self-evident connection between any image and an event. Speech is the first amendment. If we are willing to control speech why are efforts against the second amendment unthinkable?
As far as freedoms not enumerated in the constitution we are very willing to enact all sorts of laws to enforce various ideas seen to be in the public interest. In the 1960’s and 70’s drinking laws in the US were slightly liberalized in a number of states, but during the 1980’s laws were passed that would reduce federal highway funds in state that allowed the purchase of alcohol before age 21. Statistics seem to indicate that this did reduce some drunk driving. What is missing is that way this law has helped make underage drinking in colleges worse that it was in the past. While I don’t support this law, it does indicate an attempt to fix a problem. What is missing here is any attempt to monitor the efficacy of the law. Still it was a start.
With gun violence we are almost completely unwilling. The Democrats have just about given up. The Republicans are the Jesus and Guns party so anything from them would be a surprise. Do we really need to have easy access to semi-automatic rifles? Do we need large capacity magazines? Should it be so easy to buy large amounts of ammunition?
