Last month the people of the United States along with many folks around the world were shocked as we heard of the killings in Sandy Hook. I teach at an elementary school and daily I see the faces of children as young and innocent as those dear little ones who had their lives taken from them by a killer. I won't speak his name and I won't ever write his name. I hope it is lost in the dust.
I don't see him portrayed in the same way that many in the mainstream media see him. They refer to him as troubled and as the shooter. I refer to him as the murderer -- the mass murderer.
We can't let our emotions run roughshod over our freedoms. I hear people calling for gun-control and even some want the Second Amendment stricken from the Constitution as "out-dated." If that amendment is deemed out-dated then it will not be long until the First Amendment seems out-dated to some and we have a dictatorship. Remember that the people of the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany and Communist China all have first-hand experience with gun control.
I know that folks mock many who own guns because we are nervous about the power of the government to take us over. We as individuals each realize that we alone are not going to stop the juggernaut of the military if the leaders of this nation tried to conquer by force. However; those leaders realize what the Russians realized early on in the Cold War. They realized that they, A) did not know how many guns were out there, B) did not know who had guns, C) they knew it would be impossible to take this nation by force house by house. One could argue that fact alone would define us as a militia.
Chicago just hit the milestone of its 500th murder in 2012. Most were from gang related and crime related incidents. The bad guys have guns and won't register them.
People are asking for armed guards on every campus in America. Are they nuts? On the campus where I teach we have a huge distance from my classroom to the Kindergarten room. Had somebody started to fire shots at one end of the campus by the time the guard got to the other side it would be all over. Besides, all one needs to do is kill the guard first and then have their way with the rest of us. At more than $100,000 for each guard annually, I would prefer to see funds be spent for another couple of teachers in classrooms for each school.
Lincoln warned us, "that no foreign power would ever take a drink from the Ohio or make a track on the Blue Ridge Mountains but that if this nation would be defeated it would be by suicide." Ben Franklin warned that, "Those who are willing to give up a little liberty for temporary safety deserve neither." Let's discuss ways to enforce existing laws and punish criminals without turning every law abiding citizen who owns a gun into a criminal.
People use phrases such as assault weapons while they are really semi-automatic or automatic weapons. They use the term to make the case that guns are bad or evil. Guns don't kill, people kill people.
Last year and for many years before we have seen mass killings, due to abortions, on a daily basis and we seem to not only accept those killings but many in our society applaud that it happens. Those killings were more than 125 times worse each day as what happened at Sandy Hook and not a word. Last year there were 1,2 million legal abortions performed in this country. Think of that number in a different way -- 3,287 babies killed each and every day for 365 days and we call it, "Pro Choice." I remember a friend telling me that she prayed for a cure for cancer and the response back from God was, "I sent the one to develop the cure but that baby was aborted."
Was Sandy Hook awful? Yes. I cried many tears over the loss as I could understand the sorrow from a teacher's point of view. I could understand from a parental point of view and as an uncle and grandparent. However, I don't want to throw the God-given rights of citizens away based on the actions of a mass murderer.
On the other hand -- I do want to protect 1.2 million little ones in the year 2013.
