Remembering Sandy Hook - Confessions of a Gun Grabber

There is no way you can truly put yourself in another's shoes.  I do try.  Yesterday was the first time I actually tried to imagine, from the perspective of the kids, what it was like to be facing certain death from a crazed gunman who had just burst into your world with no warning. I tried to go back to my own memories of when I was six or seven years old.  How the classroom smelled, sounded.  I tried to imagine my six year old reaction.  How the gun shots would have sounded in a room with the tile floors, how the screams of my classmates would have sounded.  The flurry of thoughts that would have been going through my head, the whys and the feeling of utter helplessness.

It's an exercise I wish more people would do.  Maybe the horror of what happened a year ago in Newtown, Connecticut would resonate even more.  Maybe it would bring out more empathy.  Twenty children, ages six and seven, and six adults were killed on this day a year ago.  A year later, no one has answers to the whys.  Twenty year old Adam Lanza killed his mother, took her guns, and went to the school and massacred twenty-six people before killing himself.

In an effort to shut up people like me, the NRA, the gun nuts, the manufacturers have pointed out that it's in poor taste to use this incident as a means to push an agenda of gun control.  Frankly, I don't care.  The time for concerns over taste are long past.  Columbine, Aurora, Newtown, these names must be used and kept alive to try to change the outrageous state in which we currently live.  And yes, I am what is known in right wing circles as a "gun grabber".


This is what is known as a teachable moment.  The pro-gun crowd would like us to focus our attention on anything but the tools that were used to take twenty-six lives.  I can agree with some of that.  Strangely enough, the right wingers are all concerned about mental health issues in the wake of this tragedy.  Well that's nice.  They haven't been concerned at all before.  The only reason they are now is that it deflects attention away from the guns.  Sure, we can have the talk about mental health but a man with a knife wouldn't have been able to pull off what Adam Lanza did.  Certainly we can talk about the world of violent video games and I also welcome that discussion.  But these kids weren't killed with virtual weapons.  The guns used in the commission of this heinous crime were very real and very common.

The Sturmgewehr 44

Two of the weapons used that day by Lanza were the Bushmaster XM15-E2S assault rifle and the Glock 20sf handgun.  The gun nuts go crazy over calling the XM15 an assault rifle or assault weapon.  But that term goes back several decades when describing weapons such as this.  They just want it to seem not quite so nasty.  Like most of what is used in modern warfare the origin of the assault rifle can be traced back to the German military in World War II.  In 1944 the Sturmgewehr 44, called a machine pistol to get Hitler's approval, was introduced in front line fighting, primarily used by the elite troops of the SS.  One captured by a Soviet soldier named Kalashnikov led to the development of the AK-47 and the rest is history.

 

The Bushmaster XM15-E2S

You can get into all the semantics you want but the XM15 and all weapons like it are designed to kill people.  They're not for hunting or target shooting.  They are designed to be a highly portable and efficient killing tool.  The one used by Adam Lanza had thirty round clips.  Thirty shots before you would need to reload and the gun is designed to do that rapidly.  It's insane to think that this is a weapon that needs to be available to the common citizenry.

Glock 20sf

The primary handgun used by Lanza was the Glock 20sf.  This isn't your typical handgun.  This particular model fires 10mm ammunition.  10mm ammunition was designed to give police and federal agents a leg up on criminals who are increasingly well armed.  The larger bullet is meant to put somebody down in one shot.  This isn't just a weapon made for defense or shock, it's meant to kill.  And when I say kill I mean kill human beings.  It holds fifteen rounds.  Fifteen large pieces of hot lead to be put into fifteen human beings if you want.

Adam Lanza

Adam Lanza's first victim was his mother Nancy.  She was the whack job who decided she needed to have things like assault rifles and large caliber handguns in her house around an obviously disturbed teenage boy.  She is the one who got him to learn how to use the weapons.  She is the one who allowed him to play violent video games in a room with windows sealed with garbage bags for hours on end.  It's a testament to the gun culture in our country that a middle-aged housewife would feel the need to have enough weaponry to put down an attacking army battalion in a house in suburban Connecticut.  And further that she would consider introducing these weapons to a child with a long history of emotional and developmental disorders who had shown an interest in violence since his early years.

Simply put, it's absolutely insane to think that people like the Lanzas should have access to this sort of weaponry.  As amazing as many seem to think our founding fathers were, they really screwed up on the 2nd Amendment.  Let's take a look at its text.

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

Muzzle Loading Flintlocks

In the era in which is was written there was a standing army, but police forces did not exist.  There was a need to defend against attacks from Native Americans, the British, any foreign invader, not, as the lunatic fringe claims, a repressive central government.  Guns at the time were muzzle loaders.  It took a good minute after firing one highly inaccurate lead ball to reload another.  Firearms were definitely a powerful tool on the field of battle but nothing even remotely close to what we have today.  It stretches the imagination to consider the founding fathers would have been comfortable with what has become of the 2nd Amendment today, that they would be comfortable with the number, availability, and firepower of guns today in the U.S.  But that has been decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.  The whole militia clause in the 2nd Amendment is basically ignored.

Modern Swiss Soldier

I think, if our founders were available today for comment, they would say they would have envisioned something like what you find in modern Switzerland or Israel.  Those countries have compulsory military service for the purpose of maintaining a rapidly deployable national defense force.  Those former soldiers keep their weapons and are extensively trained in their use.  They are a well regulated militia to be called on for the security of a free state.

In most modern, civilized countries the notion that guns of any type should be in the hands of regular citizens just doesn't make any sense, and it shouldn't.  America leads the world in gun related deaths by a number that doesn't compute.  More than nations involved in civil war, ethnic cleansing, more people are killed by guns in America every year.  It's a credit to mankind's development of missile weapons in the stone age and even before, the ability to stand at a distance from your enemy, or prey, or attacker and dispatch them without the need for physical contact.  It detaches you from the act.  Allows you to kill dispassionately.

So what I'm calling for is a disarming of this country.  I know that's not going to happen any time soon but I'm sure in the future something will have to be done.  I'm talking about taking guns out of the hands of everybody but police, National Guard, and military reservists.  Making it a major felony to be found in possession of one if you're not one of these people.  Taking them off the street and destroying them one at a time.  They call this gun grabbing and I am behind it 100%.  You'll hear many left wing pundits trying to assure people that "nobody wants to take your guns"; well I do.  And I think they do too but are just too scared of the backlash to say it.

Many will say you'll have to "pry it from their cold dead hands" and I would like to see if they have the cojones to back up their words.  I would suspect the answer to almost a man would be no.  It would surely take some sort of constitutional amendment or a very packed Supreme Court, but if the spirit of America is to survive, we need to start grabbing the guns and remember the children cowering together in the corner of a classroom waiting to be murdered by somebody who so easily got weapons whose pure intent is to kill human beings.

- Charlotte Bacon, 2/22/06, female
- Daniel Barden, 9/25/05, male
- Rachel Davino, 7/17/83, female.
- Olivia Engel, 7/18/06, female
- Josephine Gay, 12/11/05, female
- Ana M. Marquez-Greene, 04/04/06, female
- Dylan Hockley, 3/8/06, male
- Dawn Hochsprung, 06/28/65, female
- Madeleine F. Hsu, 7/10/06, female
- Catherine V. Hubbard, 6/08/06, female
- Chase Kowalski, 10/31/05, male
- Jesse Lewis, 6/30/06, male
- James Mattioli , 3/22/06, male
- Grace McDonnell, 12/04/05, female
- Anne Marie Murphy, 07/25/60, female
- Emilie Parker, 5/12/06, female
- Jack Pinto, 5/06/06, male
- Noah Pozner, 11/20/06, male
- Caroline Previdi, 9/07/06, female
- Jessica Rekos, 5/10/06, female
- Avielle Richman, 10/17/06, female
- Lauren Rousseau, 6/1982, female (full date of birth not specified)
- Mary Sherlach, 2/11/56, female
- Victoria Soto, 11/04/85, female
- Benjamin Wheeler, 9/12/06, male
- Allison N. Wyatt, 7/03/06, female

I won't even give any credence here to the stuff coming out of the lunatic fringe considering this to be a gun grabber conspiracy.  They call this a "false flag" incident.  If you're not familiar with the jargon of the crazies on the right that means the government either staged or allowed the event to happen to sway public opinion toward more gun control.  Look it up if you want but it's a chilling look into how truly deranged minds work.  It's very unsettling to say the least.