“There is no place in our world for bloodstained children.” – Daisaku Ikeda
“His jaw and left hand were mostly gone.… I just want people to know the ugliness of it so we don’t talk about it abstractly, like these little angels just went to heaven. No. They were butchered. They were brutalized.” –Veronique Pozner, mother of Sandy Hook victim Noah Pozner, 6 years old
What if, instead of speaking through press releases or policy statements or reporters, public opinion leaders had to address the children of Sandy Hook Elementary School to explain their opposition to doing anything about guns?
They should. They can’t, of course, because the children were slaughtered by a man shooting a gun at them.
But we can pretend. We can see how it sound when the excuses are made to those most affected by gun violence - specifically, the violence of an assault rifle.
(The name of the person still alive links to their statements, or a report on their position, concerning gun control; the statements in quotation marks paraphrase what they would have to say to the murdered children, based on their reported position.)
Rick Santorum: “The man who killed you had the right to defend himself with a really powerful weapon.” Would you say that to Noah Pozner, Rick? If you could?
Maybe Harry Reid could tell Charlotte Bacon, 6: “You getting killed by an assault rifle doesn’t mean it’s urgent to do anything about assault rifles.”
John McCain might have this message for 7 year old Daniel Barden: “The guy who shot you with an assault rifle was correct to have that assault rifle.”
Senator Chuck Grassley is good at making statements to reporters. How about a statement to Olivia Engel, 6 – to paraphrase “To protect our 2nd Amendment rights, some eggs have to be broken. Consider yourself a necessary egg.”
Sen. Tom Coburn – might you want to address this comment to 6 year old Jack Pinto? “The man who shot you was a law abiding citizen. We should have done nothing to keep guns away from him.”
Senator Mike Johanns, would you like to give this message to Emilie Parker, who was 6 years old? “Your life is important, but not as important as allowing the guy who killed you to have the gun that killed you”.
You get the idea. Strip the statements from mere ideology, take them out of the abstract, face their consequences. Don’t be so self-righteously facile.
When a politician says the 2nd Amendment precludes any action to limit assault rifles, he is saying nothing should have been done to prevent a Bushmaster falling into the hands of Adam Lanza.
When you argue that “if guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns”, you are saying since Adam Lanza was, to that point, not an outlaw, his access to that gun was totally appropriate. To quote this article: “Like some Sandy Hook parents who have spoken to the media, Veronique (Noah Pozner’s mother) has shied away from portraying Lanza as evil or diabolical. ‘If we describe him as a demonic force or as a beast with the sign of the beast on his forehead, that is a mistake,’ she says. ‘Because then we are making him apart from humanity when in fact he is part of what is possible in humanity. How do we help these people so this doesn’t happen again, so they never sink so low, so they never have to go to a place so dark where they can take out small children in a fit of rage?’”
No one is born a monster, no one is born a criminal. One becomes a criminal. Jovan Belcher, for instance: he was not a criminal, but he lost his temper and killed his girl friend. He died a criminal – but would he have become one had not a gun been handy?
When you say we need guns to insure the government doesn’t eradicate our freedoms, you are being ridiculous. Just so you know, here is what guns are more commonly used for. The ages of the deceased: 51, 40, 9, 5, 2. The guns you would, in theory, be so brave in using against the brawny, surly government, are in reality used to kill two year olds, five year olds, nine year olds, 20 six and seven year olds.
Very manly. Very brave.
Here are the children killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Surely they and their siblings and parents will understand how important it is that assault rifles are available, how vital it is to their well being that a shooter be able to fire dozens of bullets without having to reload. Tell them – look at their pictures, tell them to their face. Go ahead - tell the children, you brave, brave gun slinging “leaders”..
(See also here and here)
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