A Pattern

In Connecticut to-day, as you no doubt know, a man has shot and killed 27 people including 20 young children at an elementary school. In China to-day, a man stabbed 22 children at a school, injuring but not killing them. In China, private citizens are not allowed to own guns, while in the U.S. private citizens are allowed to own guns.

If the contrast between statistics of deaths by gun violence when comparing countries where citizens are allowed to own guns with those countries where they're not allowed to own guns didn't already make it clear which policy on guns made people safer, to-day's grim parallel of events couldn't make it more plain.

As we know from an NFL player's murder suicide shooting from two weeks ago, when Bob Costas dared to suggest on television that access to firearms leads to deaths by firearms, opponents of stricter gun control are quick to dismiss vocal endorsements of stricter gun control that come immediately after massacres as inevitably oversimplified.

Perhaps they would also tell the parents of seventeen year old Jordan Davis, who, unarmed, was shot and killed on November 23rd, that they should see no resemblance in it to the shooting and killing of Treyvon Martin.

Perhaps a pattern should not be seen in to-day's shooting occurring a few days after a deadly shooting at a shopping mall in Oregon. This year also saw the shooting at the premiere of The Dark Knight Rises.

It seems like gun massacres in the U.S. are becoming more frequent and more horrific. Considering the age of most of the victims to-day, one could argue this is the most horrific, yet I think many people are numb to the news. It has become normal. This may be the most horrific thing of all.